The Movie
Goemon (2009) is about a Japanese folk hero named Ishikawa Goemon who is along the lines of Robin Hood. He robs from the rich and gives to the poor. This of course draws the ire of said rich, evil people.
This particular film follows the exploits of Goemon in the years following the death of Oda Nobunaga. Japan is under the strict dictatorship of Toyotomi Hideyoshi who has the treacherous Ishida Mitsunari doing his bidding. Of course, there's Tokugawa Ieyasu waiting in the background plotting away.
Goemon runs across a scroll during one of his thievery episodes that gets everybody all in a huff. Apparently the scroll shows an agreement between Hideyoshi and Akechi Mitsuhide on a plot to assassinate Nobunaga. This sends Goemon into a rage because Nobunaga was his mentor (Hopefully not in the Mori Ranmaru sense) since a young age.
To add to Goemon's blinding rage towards Hideyoshi, he gets more motivation to kill the man by both Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari. Both men want Hideyoshi dead to clear the way for their own ambitions. (The movie portrays Ieyasu in a good light and Mitsunari in a not so good one.)
Goemon is successful in killing off Hideyoshi, which of course sets the stage for a power struggle between Mitsunari and Ieyasu. The final scene is Sekigahara. The battle is an epic one between the 2 sides. As they are fighting to a near stalemate, Goemon shows up in Nobunaga's old armor and scares the shit out of everybody on the battlefield. They all think that Nobunaga has come back from the dead and he's there to tear some shit up.
Goemon tears his way through the battlefield, killing anyone dumb enough from either side that gets in his way. He takes out Mitsunari, but is cut down before he can get to Ieyasu by none other than Hattori Hanzo. Surprise!
The DVD
The DVD copy that I have is from Bonzai Media. It's not so great of a copy, but I've seen worse from Japanese knock offs. There aren't any extras, which I wasn't really expecting anyway. The AV was decent, but would have been better in Blu -Ray. (Blu-Ray version of this film is not available in America.) The translation for the subtitles was the only major concern I had. Some words were not the best fit for the translation, and some words were even misspelled or typed twice! Still, this version is the best you can get in the states, so you may just have to make do.
My Review
The movie was fairly entertaining. It was interesting to see a unique take on a pivotal part of Japanese history, The main gripe I had with the story was the character development. You really feel no attachment to any of the main characters, especially Goemon! Considering that this was a fairly long movie, there was ample opportunity to accomplish this. The visuals were tremendous. Even without a Blu-ray copy I was amazed. The CG often times looked like a video game. A really, really good video game. Overall, I would recommend this movie to anyone interested in Japanese history, video games, cool action flicks or just plain bad assedness.
4.0/5.0
The character development, or lack thereof and the poor quality of the DVD itself keeps this one from getting a perfect score from me.
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