Samurai Fiction (SF サムライ・フィクション, Esu Efu Samurai Fikushon) is a comedy-samurai film directed by Hiroyuki Nakano. It is almost entirely black-and-white, and follows a fairly standard plotline for a comedy and jidaigeki samurai movie, but the presence of Tomoyasu Hotei's rock-and-roll soundtrack separates it from the films it was inspired by, such as the works of Akira Kurosawa. A loose spinoff was released in 2001, as Red Shadow.
While the film is...
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Samurai Fiction (SF サムライ・フィクション, Esu Efu Samurai Fikushon) is a comedy-samurai film directed by Hiroyuki Nakano. It is almost entirely black-and-white, and follows a fairly standard plotline for a comedy and jidaigeki samurai movie, but the presence of Tomoyasu Hotei's rock-and-roll soundtrack separates it from the films it was inspired by, such as the works of Akira Kurosawa. A loose spinoff was released in 2001, as Red Shadow.
While the film is nearly entirely in black-and-white, paying homage to older samurai movies, this allows for the artistic and dramatic use of color; this is most noticeable whenever a character is killed, and the screen flashes red for a moment. Color is used to dramatic effect at the beginning and end of the film as well.
Samurai Fiction was the first full-length feature film for writer-director Nakano Hiroyuki, who had been primarily a director of music videos for MTV Japan. His experience with music videos comes through in the directing of the film. This...
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