Samurai Marathon

Samurai Marathon

Reegs: So this is the start of quite an eastern themed kind of week,

right?

Dan: Eastern delights.

Reegs: visiting Korea, we're visiting Japan.

Cris: Well, both Korea and Japan, pretty much. That's, that's pretty much it.

First, I think we're going to start with Korea.

Reegs: we're doing, no, we're going to

Cris: no, Japan, sorry. Yes, yeah, yeah, sorry. I'm

Dan: planning

to go to japan.

Cris: I know. I am well aware, which you're not too far from it,

Dan: It's not yeah, we're gonna go cherry blossom time in april, Looking forward to it. Actually.

I've wasn't really on my bucket list of places to go if i'm honest, but

Reegs: is a bit for me actually.

Yeah,

Dan: well it was for the missus and and now we've booked. I'm looking more and more forward to it, you know

Cris: think the more you kind of do a bit of research and you look into it, then you'll actually realize how interesting and how different.

Reegs: I think it will be terrifying because it's so different.

Like the culture is so different and nothing is based around English people. Like it is like anywhere else in the world. So, you know, just to be immersed in sort of like

something completely, almost alien. Do you know what I mean? Like, I

Dan: I think that's right. I mean, I, I've been lucky enough to travel Southeast Asia, but it's such a well. Beaten track, if you like,

Cris: especially for you bloody Brits.

Dan: yeah, exactly. That this is likely to be very, very different. And I'm looking forward to the vending machines just to see what crazy shit they've got going on there.

Cause you hear all kinds of wacko stuff that you can buy in them and and the lights they love. Kind of bright lights and and the script, you know, it's obviously completely different I mean, I don't speak much japanese either. You you're pretty good on you.

Cris: No,

Dan: I thought you was fluent.

Reegs: No. I

Cris: I can grunt if you want, but just like,

Dan: Ah, see, what does that mean?

Ah, okay, good, good. What about you, Riggs?

Reegs: I don't speak any Japanese, I'm afraid.

Dan: So modest, there's a podcast, aren't we? You know. But, there we go. Let's talk about this movie then.

Reegs: Yeah. Which I had never heard of. Samurai Marathon, it's called and, but it did intrigue me because it's directed by Bernard. Bernard Rose. Yeah. Who did Candyman which is a movie I really love. A different kind of candy man. Really

Dan: kind of, it's a horror film, isn't it?

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: a really good horror film.

And he also did Mr. Nice, which I think you've talked about as well on the pod before

Dan: long time ago, yeah.

Reegs: of Howard Marks. And he did this, which is a sort of 19th century. Feudal Japan thing.

Dan: in 1855, isn't it?

Reegs: Yeah. And it starts with, like, a young Japanese woman. She's painting some ships off the coast.

And she's giving us some narration and some backstory, talking about how for 260 years, Japan has cut itself off from the rest of the world. But then the black ships arrived, and Japan was changed forever. And as she says that, it, like, dissolves from her painting, which is a great representation of what is actually happening.

Dan: happening.

brilliant painting i thought watercolor yeah in a kind of classic japanese style and as you say then we see the american army yankee will do yankee doodle dandy kind

Reegs: They're literally singing it as they walk up the hill. This like Band of Americans singing the Yankee Doodle

Dandy, this

Dan: one kind of japanese Samurai guard looking fellow who's just tapping his legs to it, isn't he?

And he's just like enjoying the music, and,

Reegs: Yeah. I

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: Which I was, I was very

surprised when I've seen because I, I Obviously nominated this week and I've, I was looking to do because my, the only one film that I've watched was the main feature that we're going to speak about. And I kind of wanted to connect the two of them somehow together and I thought, okay, well, this is, this is an interesting idea.

And especially for the Far East race and blah, blah, blah, all that. But then when I've seen it the way I've seen a little bit of a. Snippet what it shows you on Amazon when it shows you like a common like a trailer thing and then to see this guy and It almost looks like a, like a comedy, the way they, you know, the way they sing and the Yankee Doodle and then the guy laughing and then, and

Dan: Yeah, you don't, you don't really get

Cris: was a bit like, is this, how this is going to be?

Is this like a, kind of like a, I thought this was a serious film,

but.

Reegs: it was like a comedic moment because the, the Americans turn up with all their sort of flamboyant bluster and they're just, the Japanese are sort of stoically waiting and he, he unloads gifts and he talks of peace and globalism and all these things.

Cris: Almost

trying to sound Japanese.

Dan: Also, he speaks English and they haven't got an eye, they haven't got a clue what he's saying,

Reegs: And he says, well, no, he's speaking

Dan: and he says, well, no, he's speaking Dutch.

Reegs: have obviously been visited by Dutch traders,

Dan: Japanese have obviously been visited by Dutch traders before and that's the language that they're used to speaking to the, the Western, Kind of, ships and then, well, European ships then but the Americans have to then translate the Dutch.

Into their English into Dutch and then it gets translated into into Japanese and they're giving bourbon whiskey They're giving guns. They're giving Like a Morse code device as well, aren't they?

Reegs: Photographs, a telegram, all the gifts of the West and, and he's got a letter from President Fillmore that he once handed to the like, prime, the emperor in, Edo? Edo? Edo. Though it's pretty clear that the minister who's there is kind of not sure that these gifts really are, and this globalism really is a good thing, right?

And then we cut to Anaka Castle. It's Lord Katsuwakira. The paintings from the beginning were his daughter's, his fifth daughter, I think, Princess Yuki. And though he's sort of, he's delighted to see them, the one of

He sort of talks about the negative Western influence and he burns it in

Cris: Well, that's the only one that's because all the other ones are more, I don't know about landscape and flowers and this and that's,

Reegs: Well, and done in a traditional Japanese style and these ones are more Western

Cris: Western influenced and he's straight away.

He burns it and then he's Which I thought it was, but it's also I think obviously that's the culture is like, Oh, bring this guy in. Okay, these are lovely. So nice. And then bring that guy in. Okay, it's time for you to get married. This is the guy you're going to get married to. It's just like that.

Reegs: an arranged marriage. He does bring in

Dan: And She

ain't too happy about it.

Reegs: Well, she's got dreams of going to Edo and then beyond. She talks of it like, you know, she

Dan: She's got to know her place, Riggs. You know, she's the she's the princess, you know, yeah.

Reegs: So

he has dreams, that lord, whatever, of losing to, of Katsu Akira, of losing to the Americans, so he gets everybody to come together for a big announcement and then we kind of

Cris: Yeah, he sacks the lead samurai, the old boy. Yeah. And then he's like, right, I know what we're gonna do.

We're

gonna have, we're gonna have a race.

Reegs: Well, first of all, it's just a big announcement, isn't it? I don't think he tells them it's a race

until

Dan: yeah, And this then, the film takes the opportunity to cut to another character who we Jin Ai. Yeah, Jin Ai is growing up as a young boy and remembering conversations he had with his father. And he is trained to be a ninja. And the ninjas aren't loyal to,

Reegs: They're not loyal to the local clan

Dan: local clan.

Reegs: castle. They're loyal to the, to the emperor.

Dan: That's right. Yeah. They're loyal to the top man. And so, they must perform well, but not too well. He must just operate in the shadows,

Reegs: A life of kind of precise mediocrity.

He's never to stand out. So,

And

Dan: I, it fascinates me this with the, with the ninjas because

Great. We're going to see some proper old ninja stuff here. But this film doesn't really go too deep into the history of the ninja or anything.

I mean, the most you get is, is this little montage as he's growing up and these conversations with his father. And then we understand that he has done that. He's never been drunk. He's always been in control. He, he just performing Just at the level not to get noticed, but always being in and around the conversations.

Because if ever he hears that there may be something rumbling, maybe a revolt going on, he can send word to his true leader.

Reegs: So that's what happens here, right?

He hears of a big announcement. It's kind of what helps kick the plot off. And his assumption is that they're going to war, there's going to be an uprising. So

Dan: Blake's having the shits when he goes off

Reegs: having the shits when he goes off to the announcement to go and send a messaging code to the

Dan: the Joker. It's also funny how I've never really looked into I've read

Cris: it's about to kick off.

Well it was peacetime as well, so I guess they had, all trained to be

Dan: well it was peace time as well. So I guess they had all trained to be Sam. They're all trained to be swordsman and everything,

Reegs: And this is the tail end of the Samurai, right? And this movie is as much about all these things that the plot is about as it is about what happened when, you know, cultures smashed together America and what it did to the globalism how it awoke and changed Japan, right?

So

Cris: So anyway, then he fakes the,

Reegs: He fakes the shits, he gives, that sends off the message to the Shogun, and then everyone is assembled for the big announcement where he says basically like, like you were saying, 260 years of, of peace have made everybody weak, basically, and undisciplined. And this is where he announces that everybody who can of a serving age is going to do this 36 mile foot race across like the most punishing terrain there is.

Every man under 50, which would include us, how do you reckon you'd get on

in this

Dan: probably better than some of them because they were puking up after not very far. It

Cris: Not even at the checkpoint they were already puking, so

Dan: but,

Reegs: And the winner gets one wish, whatever he wants. That's

Dan: that's right. So he Ginu then realizes, oh, I've jumped the gun here.

I basically told them that there's a revolt going on. They're going to send a full squad down here to carve everybody into little bits. I need to get my letter back. So he starts running in their strange samurai manner

of hands down, knees up.

Reegs: Well, we get that explained to us as well, right? There's like a number of different characters stories who start intersecting.

One is who you were sort of kind of talking about, the guy who describes the running style.

the old samurai. So there's a little boy, Izuki, who wants to run in the race to be like his late samurai father. And he gets, Matemon, I think he's called and he teaches him this namba running, this high legged running.

Because you've got to run with your robes and sword.

And then there's Hironoshin he's the fastest and the

Cris: Yeah, but he's a foot soldier. So he's not on this. Whatever, the social scale, he's just like,

Dan: yo, he is lowered down.

Cris: down.

Reegs: lower down, and he's getting pressure from both Tsujimura, who's the guy who's been set up to marry

Cris: Yeah, and he's more of a samurai leader kind of thing and high, higher up, let's say.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: and a bit of a villain. And so he's putting pressure on, on Honimura. And there's Princess Yuki herself, who kind of one night decides, fuck this, cuts her hair and runs away. Where she's kind of accosted by a traveler.

Dan: and also then comes back to pretend that she's a boy and and enters herself into the race as well.

So

Reegs: here we are, we're in the race, we've got our characters.

Dan: We've got our characters, we're in the race because Jinu can't get his letter back, he gets to a checkpoint, and without a letter from the, the top man in, in, in the in the tribe there,

Cris: the leader of the clan,

Dan: leader of the clan, sorry, he can't get past his checkpoint, so he's,

Cris: he has to go back.

Dan: has to go back, and he has to pretend, you know, I need to be in this race.

Reegs: So, they do set off. It's some shenanigans straight away. People are puking. Tsuji Mura is clearly not the sort of fine physical specimen compared to the other men,

Dan: of fine physical specimen compared to the other men,

Reegs: a politician.

Dan: politician. And he was by far

Cris: Yeah. And he was by far the favorite. So he, he gets 10 gold

Reegs: Rio, or whatever they were called, and then Tsujimura is also, it's not really clear how they know where they're running, but okay, they do know where they're running, right?

And Tsujimura and his men have stashed, like, a this made me laugh, like a,

Cris: carriage thing with it?

Reegs: yeah, what is that called? Where you carry a guy, like, basically, in a kind of wooden crate

Cris: it's not a rich shoe.

Yeah. I dunno. It's like a yeah,

Dan: is like a.

Yeah, human rickshaw or something, but

Reegs: They've stashed it so he doesn't have to run.

Dan: and,

Cris: but the others have

Reegs: I know, yeah.

Cris: up with

Reegs: I know,

Cris: it's like, what

Dan: He would've been so much quicker just walking than,

Cris: than just them carrying him up the hill.

Dan: and but he saved his legs and he joins. Then halfway through feeling a little more energized than everybody else because of this shortcut.

Cris: Then the other accountant, like the leader of the accountants. He fakes that he's got a bad back and he's like, Oh, don't worry. Just leave me here. Leave me here.

The old man and the kid goes past him. He's like, he's a fanny. Leave him. It's okay. And then he just, you can see him. You see something dodgy. He kind of looks around and he just sprints. Proper sprint, like no more back pain. And then you see, he's got a horse.

Reegs: Yeah,

that's right,

Cris: like, what is going on

Dan: He's another ninja,

Reegs: He is, yeah,

Dan: The Emperor, yeah, to the Shogun. And

Reegs: And in fact, Jin Ai and him end up having an encounter, right?

Cris: Later on.

Reegs: He sort of sneaks off to signal the assassins that are coming the other way from Edo Castle that have been sent off, basically, because they've got the message. We haven't

Cris: get shown the thing with a, with a gun when they give him the gun to the,

Reegs: Hayabusa, yeah, he sends off his henchmen, Hayabusa with like a bunch of bandits and shit to kind of come back and wreak havoc. And Jinai sees them, he signals them and all that, and then He ends up in a fight, basically, with that squire, Ueki, the head of

Cris: Yes,

the head of the

Reegs: The head of the accountants, who turned out to be a ninja for the other side, and it's a good one.

It's

Dan: It's a decent battle, isn't it?

Reegs: it? Long take, clear action, steady camera, swords Nothing

Dan: Nothing silly. It's not one of those ninja where they're jumping off trees and floating through the air. This is

Cris: No, this is just, yeah, this is just made to I quite like that, to be fair, that it wasn't It wasn't like Crouching Tiger where he's on a It's different for all of

Reegs: it's room for all of it for me. But I liked the sort of brutal, the reality of it, the way the swords hit together and the way that fights were only two or three jabs at a time before they reset.

Dan: Yeah. And there was, you know, damage done on both sides. It wasn't like there was a clear winner. These were

Cris: gets a little knick and as

Dan: him. He gets a little nick and as he goes in for the kill, he plunges his samurai sword straight through him. And manages. Then he, he's still trying to get another jab in, but he stops that doesn't he, and manages to push him to the ground and rip his sword out.

And that's one down.

Reegs: Princess Yuki gets apprehended at a checkpoint.

They rumble that she's actually a her, not a he. As she had been pretending to be and is captured. But not long after that, Hayabusa turns up singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. Brandishing his pistols and just shoots about six guys at the gate. Like, it's really horrible.

Cris: Yeah. And then she kind of escapes after that.

shot Yeah, she's shot in the back,

Dan: She's shot in the shoulder, but she manages to, to get away. And

Reegs: In fact, she's found by Jinnai,

Dan: Jinhai. Jinhai finds her down by the stream. He cuts the bullet out. And this coincides with our the guy who's been.

bequeathed to her taking, yeah, Tsuji Mori taking another shortcut

Reegs: Oh, this was amazing,

Cris: Yeah, I was good at that.

Dan: kind of

Cris: He was then, he was then kind of double crossed by his mates.

Reegs: He was double, he was betrayed by his mates. AKA Jima was one of them. He actually pushes one guy off the cliff and you see him fall, like, and then he cuts

Dan: He doesn't push him off.

Reegs: No, he's made to Okajima pushes him off. Yeah, and then they're crossing like this gorge over a little like using a rope bridge and the guy goes first and then cuts the rope as Sujimura is going

Cris: And then a bear shows

Reegs: and he's sort of hanging off the side of the

the,

Ridge and then a bear fucking shows up.

Yeah, and it growls at them both and then turns around shits all over him

Dan: and shits all over him. He's just thrilled that she's alive. He leaves her with Jin Ai. He jumps on Jin Ai's horse.

Reegs: on Jin Ai's horse. He's

Dan: he suddenly got a little bit of hope and he goes past his mate His ex mate who cut the rope and left him for dead thinking I'm gonna win this race.

And he chops his head off like a full on

Reegs: an incredible decapitation, isn't

Dan: it's a full on like he was just still talking kind of

Cris: his mouth is

Dan: moving but his head is no longer attached to his body.

Reegs: Yeah. By this point, the psychotic buer henchman, he has got to the castle, which is largely undefended because everybody is running the race. Yeah. And he barges right into see Lord Katsu Akira. And I like this scene because like, you didn't have to be like a film buff to see like he goes in with his muddy shoes.

The, the, the, like, mud falling in clumps to the floor to show his disrespect. And this, the barbarianism that the guy had been talking about earlier of Western influence, because I think even earlier he was singing Yankee Doodle Dandy and

Dan: And, and he's just cool as, as cucumber. He poured himself sake in the most dignified ways.

They have this special routine, don't they? A little bamboo stick. They tip it into a cup.

Cris: it. Is matcha tea

Dan: A matcha tea. He puts it perfectly back in, in place and balances it and then slowly drinks it. It's this perfect routine compared to the barbarian on the other side, or being a Japanese barbarian.

That influence, as you say,

has

Cris: straight away. Yeah.

Reegs: like that scene of him doing the tea, which maybe takes 60 or 70 seconds of screen time, which is quite a long time. And then it's punctuated because he afterwards Hayabusa just shoots the guy. As he's coming up behind him, he tells him Japan is changing. And he shows him the guns, doesn't he?

Cris: Yeah. He's like, this is the cold 45. It's called the peacemaker. Yeah.

Yeah.

Reegs: So, there's a big fight with Highbooster's bandit friends, isn't there? And the Shogun's men and the Anarcha Loyalists, really good, good stuff. We don't have to

Cris: don't have to get into. Oh,

Dan: No, but you're

Reegs: there's one with a horse and a guy getting dragged along and loads of bow and arrow and sword action and

Dan: A classic kind of rope and tree trick to take the guys off their horses. The princess is involved and considering she's been shot, she's pretty rock hard. And, and taking you know, a few out herself and being involved and then they just line them all up

Reegs: well there's one scene, in the middle of all the fighting, it stops just to show a a fallen, somebody who's, he's not even dead yet, he's still blinking and there's a grasshopper walking

Cris: walking

Reegs: amazing shot.

Yeah. And, yeah, so everybody is kind of dead at this point,

Dan: and some of the people are still in the

Cris: race.

They're oblivious to what's

Dan: They're oblivious to what's going on.

Others

Reegs: And all of our heroes are still going. So Princess Yuki's still in it. Sujimura, Hironoshin, everybody.

Dan: The young boy, the old bloke. They're still

Reegs: Well, they come later, because it's a good scene that, actually, when they turn up. So, yeah. They are still running the race.

Hayabusa is about to shoot them all at the finishing line, that's right, isn't he?

Cris: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing he kind of waits to see because the race is still going. They're all running. The, the Akira man, the leader of the clan with Hausa, they're at the top of the castle kind of

Reegs: That's right. At

Cris: the finishing line.

And as the, the people that run the race are approaching, you can see him aiming with a gun and then all the women. With a bow and arrow, they just shoot him,

Reegs: He throws a gin. I, I think throws a

Dan: a ninja

Reegs: doesn't

Cris: Yeah, he, he throws the, yeah, he throws the ninja star.

Reegs: He takes him down and then he's Yeah.

Stabbed to death, I think by loads of people who just sort of run in and

Dan: Yeah, there's, there's one other guy

Cris: the women with those, kind of, I don't, I don't know how you call the sword that has a It's like a

Reegs: It's a staff with a, with a

Cris: Yes, yeah, the staff with the

Reegs: knife on the end.

Cris: something like that.

Dan: like

Cris: then, some other traitor

appears and tries to stab,

Dan: tries to stab.

Cris: Who's, yeah,

Dan: that

Reegs: don't even Betray Right, that movie, that movie that we're gonna talk about for the midweek uprising has the most amount of turncoats I've ever seen in a single movie.

Cris: Yeah, but still, it's still, this is still good though with, again, you think, oh, I'm actually a ninja. So many ninjas, what has it got, and they all have to just, they don't care if it's right or wrong. Well, you need to kill that guy. It doesn't matter if what I think, okay. And then anyway, the Jinsai or is it Jinsai?

Jinai, he throws another death star and kills that guy. And

Reegs: Oh, it's Lord Katsuwakira actually grabs the gun, doesn't he,

Cris: yes. Yeah. And shoots him with a gun.

Reegs: gun. So maybe embracing the new world and trying to bring it into the new

Dan: certainly defending himself right there at the moment.

But Jinnai throws himself to the floor towards the end of this because he can't live with the guilt. He is a man of honour. He realises that he was the one that brought this on them. Start with his letter jumping the gun.

Reegs: Also, he's now made an enemy of the Shogun, essentially, because, not an enemy, but, you know, he's fucked it up, basically.

He's that, he's grown loyalty to the Anaka clan that he was never supposed to do.

Dan: That's right, yeah.

Reegs: So, he pleads for his family to be spared. Then it looks like he's going to commit seppuku,

Cris: Yes. Yeah, he does. He takes the sword out and, and

Dan: yeah, he's about to but then the princess says she, she begs to spare his life. Because he's shown loyalty and that he'd saved her and saved her father.

Cris: Really? Yeah.

Dan: And that's what they do. They, they spare him. And then it kind of cuts to, The

Cris: and the old man make it towards the end. No.

Reegs: and

Dan: Yeah. And, and that he can barely stand the old boy. I mean, he's done his

Cris: done

Reegs: in his pants at this point. He's taken

Dan: everything off. He's, yeah, he's, he's done his back in once or twice.

Reegs: His knees, dodgy. Knees,

Dan: gone. I know how he feels to be fair. But he, he did complete the race. And yeah, it's, it kind of merges.

Cris: it finishes.

Dan: No. Well it merges

Reegs: there's, there's, you get, first of all, you get the Commodore and the Shogun signing the peace treaty on the beach.

And there's some narration that tells you that 12 years after that was signed, that was the end of the samurai as an institution in Japan. So the world really did change for them. And then there is that really cool scene where it's from earlier in the movie where they're running through the woods,

Cris: yes, like the six or seven of them running And

Reegs: And it slowly merges into a footage of the modern Ja run rerunning of that marathon that occurs in Japan,

Dan: In Anaka.

Reegs: Ika. Yeah. The Annika Marathon.

Cris: Anaka, yeah

Dan: Which, which is really cool. I think that happens around in, in May, or March or something not when I'm there because I did look thought oh I could just see them going by and they still then keep Um the the tradition of it being a samurai type marathons so there's a lot of them that dress up as samurais and things and ninjas to do that marathon which is pretty i quite enjoyed this chris i thought this was it started off as you say a different film to what it later developed in it could have been at that from the beginning at least on first viewing in the first few minutes oh is this going to be a bit tongue in cheek the way through this because of the way that they came in But it turned out to be more of a serious tale, but not too serious.

There was plenty of comedy and, and funny moments in it. And that was juxtaposed with, you know, some really violent scenes of chopping off heads and and knives and, and blades right through them.

Reegs: It's not so much an action movie, though. It's a movie that has some action in it, right? It's not, you wouldn't describe it as an action

Dan: Yeah, no, that's fair. And but it, it, it was entertaining and a kind of sports movie, I guess, in, in the sense that,

Cris: There is some running and

Dan: were doing the marathon, they were doing the run, there was this competition, but obviously a bigger cause came about from it. And the reason they did the marathon and it wasn't an uprising, it was just to say, look, if you can do that.

And he's quite a clever leader, you know, he was saying if you can do that It just goes to show you guys can do anything because obviously right now in modern days 36 miles doesn't seem Unbelievable, but back then, the terrain the the

Cris: there's no pavement, there's no, you're not running on it, there's no trainers, they were running with those

sandals, it's like

Dan: been Unbelievable amount of distance to cover in a day.

And and so that was a, it was a team building exercise, essentially. He brought in for his his warriors just to say, look, if ever it does kick off, you can look back at moments like this and say, we survived that. We can, we can take on anyone.

Reegs: Yeah, I really like this. I really liked this, actually. I thought, like, you know, it makes the sort of end of the samurai and all that stuff feel very real through this story. And I thought that was interesting. I thought it looked great. And then I thought the score was absolutely superb.

And I looked it up afterwards by Philip Glass. So, it is one that really stands out.

Dan: can see right through it, can't

Reegs: you really can. So,

Cris: you? You really

Reegs: Yeah, really strong recommend

Cris: Yeah, I did like it, I did like it. I didn't, I told you, I wanted, I didn't know much about it.

But then, when I was looking at, kind of, something about swords in Japan and summarising that, and this kind of popped up on my

I

was like, okay, let me have a look. And then when I saw, you know what, this looks like something that's a bit more interesting than, like I said, don't get me wrong. I like a sword movie and I like a Samurai movie as much as any, any, anything else.

But sometimes when they're flying too much, it's just a bit All right, man. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's always, I didn't want it to turn into John wick either,

Dan: if if we if we're into These kind of samurai movies then if you're into This then we've saved you looking out for your next one. Check this out.

Cris: Yeah, strong.