Three Outlaw Samurai (1964) Satire and Chaos in Feudal Japan (Review)

For many, the samurai movie is the domain of Akira Kurosawa, with both the legendary director and chanbara (sword fighting movies) tied at the hip. Naturally, that isn’t true. That said, perception is reality by anything beyond Kurosawa being difficult to find; it’s getting better, but still – it’s not great. The one champion for us underserved fans in the West is the Criterion Collection, which has released many of the “other” names in this field – whether Masayaki Koyabashi and his artful cinema or the popcorn of Hideo Gosha. The latter is today’s focus as (the) Three Outlaw Samurai has saw released as part of Criterion’s UK expansion.

Gosha debuted in the samurai genre with the Three Outlaw Samurai and worked within it until the Japanese film industry moved on, as depicted in the tasteful ode to the genre in Ken Ochiai’s Uzamasa Limelight. And for a debut, this is a remarkably complete article with a plot that bares the hallmarks of something as twisty as Yojimbo.

In Gosha’s film, Shiba (Tetsuro Tamba (who he’d later work with on Sword of the Beast)) is a veteran samurai that becomes entangled in a plot by a group of peasants who’ve kidnapped a corrupt magistrate’s daughter as a means to seek justice with the forthcoming arrival of the ruling lord. The next titular samurai is Kikyo (Mikijirō Hira), a morally ambiguous samurai who aligns himself with the corrupt regime for food, wine, and money. The final member of the trio is Sakura (Isamu Nagato), a clumsy “country bumpkin” who is introduced asleep in a jail cell. Through the duplicitousness of the magistrate and his tendency to have everyone who stands up against him killed, the three samurai join forces in an uneasy alliance.

Wuxia (historical Chinese martial arts) and Chanbara movies are from the same world, especially post-lone wolf and cub. Before that series courted international success, Chanbara movies were dramatic pieces that told stories of the feudal ages of Japan – fighting was an afterthought, the only solution when all else failed. Films like this and the earlier Criterion release, Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, tended to have an inelegance and crudeness to their violence. More clumsy than it is balletic, choreographed action – drama is everything.

In Three Outlaw Samurai, Gosha asks who samurai are loyal to, whether it is their masters or their ethical code. A pertinent point, as, like the man without a name, samurai tended to be noble loners. Supporting characters go through arcs upon this theme too. One character talks of wanting to escape their corrupt father’s grasp, but when that choice is pointing an instrument in death in their face, they opt for familiarity. Gosha’s script suggests that subservience is more acceptable than shaking up the system; pointing the finger at Japanese society, maybe? The Chanbara isn’t exactly known for its satirical leanings, but here we have a rare exception.

Another interesting plot device that Gosha employs is to have things constantly go wrong for the heroes, either by making a choice that ultimately backfires or through Sakura being the living embodiment of putting your foot in your mouth. Usually, when things go wrong for the heroes in samurai movies, events tend to take a turn for the bleak – Seven Samurai and Harakiri being great examples. In three outlaw samurai, mistakes draw the three leading men closer and closer together before ultimately concluding that revenge and loyalty are futile.

Compare a movie from Hollywood in the 1980s to now, and it’s like looking at an ancient artifact with people running around with no coordination, throwing fists in the hope that one might land. While this era of samurai movies hasn’t dated as poorly, the lack of choreography that made Hong Kong cinema world-famous is missing. While it may not have been the intent, there is value in the chaos of throwing bodies at action scenes. For the three outlaws, it’s about finding meaning in that chaos and interpreting that effectively to stop the leagues of men out for the heads. That might sound obtuse, but in essence, the action chops of Gosha’s film can be interpreted with this simple line – patience will always defeat chaos. Samurai cinema is a composed branch of the Japanese film industry, a marriage between beauty, chaos, and patience. Sometimes that relates to flat movies, and sometimes Cinematographer Tadashi Sakai ushers in a genuinely beautiful production every bit the equal of Kurosawa’s intimate samurai movies.

On the disc is no bounty of extras, just a glorious print, and a trailer – for any supplementary content, you have to look inside the booklet, where you’ll find an essay by Bilge Ebiri. Stripped back as that is, you don’t buy Samurai movies on blu-ray for the extras. You buy them for the film, to keep them alive for new generations to discover. And for those who make ill-informed statements like Kurosawa movies mean the same thing as samurai movies, these three outlaw samurai are up there with the films you need to educate yourself about.

Thank you for reading our review of (the) Three Outlaw Samurai

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