'Kagemusha' a moving masterpiece

In 1980 Japanese film-directing legend Akira Kurosawa found himself in a rut. Coming off a successful Academy Award win for his film "Dersu Uzala," Kurosawa was unable to attain financing for his samurai war epic "Kagemusha." After being turned down, Kurosawa began painting storyboards for his film although he felt it would never see the light of day. This all would change, however, once film directors Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas learned of Kurosawa's lack of funding and made the decision to finance the Japanese auteur. This same decision allowed Kurosawa to bring about one of the finest films in his cinematic career.\n"Kagemusha" (The Shadow Warrior) is the almost entirely factual retelling of the great war between Lord Shingen Takeda and the forces of Nobunaga Oda and Ieyasu Tokugawa. In the beginning, Lord Shingen is accompanied by his generals who have discovered a thief who looks exactly like him. For sparing his life, Shingen's double (Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays both Shingens) agrees to serve under him. When the real Lord Shingen is wounded and passes away, the generals decide to cover up his death by replacing him with the double. Throughout the movie, Shingen's double is forced to live a life of secrecy while maintaining strong relationships with his troops, government officials and most importantly Shingen's own grandson. If living this kind of life wasn't hard enough already, Shingen's land faces the oncoming legions of Nobunaga and Ieyasu and he is forced to lead his country into battle.\nKurosawa's "Kagemusha" is easily one his finest masterworks. Nakadai's performance as Lord Shingen's double is at times both noble and endearing yet absolutely heartbreaking when he finally realizes he no longer has a life of his own. While the film does focus on the majestic warfare of feudal Japan, there is an even greater focus on the human condition of a man who is no longer in possession of his identity. Shingen's double is a doppelgänger haunted in his nightmares by the dead leader whom he replaced. This combination of identity crisis and imperial discord results in a film that rivals Kurosawa's other successes such as "Seven Samurai" and "Rashomon." \nCriterion's release of "Kagemusha" is hands down the best release a Kurosawa film has seen on DVD yet. This stunning 2-disc set is loaded with supplements which include commentary by scholar Steven Prince, theatrical trailers/teasers, brand new interviews with directors Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, a "making-of" documentary, the featurette "Image: Kurosawa's Continuity," which displays the film through Kurosawa's storyboards, five Suntory Whiskey commercials shot on the set of "Kagemusha," onscreen comparisons of Kurosawa's sketches with actual film stills and finally a massive 48-page booklet containing storyboards, essays, biographical sketches and even an interview with Kurosawa himself shortly after the film's release. And if all that wasn't enough, the film print is pristine and restores almost 20 minutes not seen in the original U.S. theatrical cut.\nOne has to wonder what would've happened had Akira Kurosawa never been able to make this breathtaking masterpiece. The success of "Kagemusha" allowed Kurosawa to create his Shakespearean war epic "Ran" and together those two films work together as a testament that Kurosawa could work with a big budget and still maintain a purely artistic vision. Accept no substitutes, no one made samurai films like Kurosawa did and nothing comes close to "Kagemusha"