The tagline of this movie was “A deep-frozen 400-year-old samurai is shipped to Los Angeles, where he comes back to life.” I know, terrible, right? Well, it pretty much sums up the story and the quality of the flick. God bless the ‘80’s, when crap like this got greenlit and a budget. The problem with this movie, however, is that it seemed to take itself very seriously. A good cruddy ‘80’s movie has to treat itself like bubble gum and, not matter how much you may like it, we all know you’re not going to get nourishment from bubble gum, and the maker should know this too.
So, a samurai is deeply in love and then watches his woman die right before he’s hit with an arrow and falls over a cliff into water. Somehow he gets frozen solid in water that isn’t frozen solid and somehow he lives for four centuries. Then, when he comes back to, thanks to super advanced scientists, he wants to get back to the business of ass-kicking. He is surprisingly well adjusted to seeing things like cars, tv’s and airplanes, as well as people who are dressed, speaking and acting most bizarrely. Despite the movie raising more questions than answering (and not purposefully for phsilosophical stimulation, mind you), they seem to put a great deal of emphasis on specific details that don’t drive the story at all, like having the guy use a dialect of Japanese that is from the era and not like modern Japanese. What they should have done is put a good deal of emphasis on story and ideas, if they wanted it to be a legit movie.
Moral of the story, if you’re going to make a movie about some guy getting unfrozen after a ton of time, don’t take yourself seriously, the only movies that have ever used this concept even remotely well didn’t take it seriously at all (think Austin Powers, Demolition Man and Encino Man). Then again, there's no problem in this movie a sizable amount of booze can't fix.
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