There are times when I feel like I should be discussing important, thought provoking movies, or at least movies people have actually seen. Then there are times when I just want to discuss Princess Blade. Set in the indeterminate future, Princess Blade [Shurayuki-Hime] tells the story of Yuki [Yumiko Shaku], a young assassin who discovers her destiny while finding out that the pack of cut-throat killers she lives with aren't exactly the nicest people in the world. It seems that in order to gain control of the house of Takemikazuchi, which at this point is nothing more than some people living in the basement of an office building, some nefarious clan members killed Yuki's mother and kept her in the dark about her heritage. Naturally Yuki finds out the truth and sets out to avenge her mother and reclaim her title as the princess of the Takemikazuchi. I can understand Yuki wanting revenge for the death of her family but I don't know why anyone would want to run a basement dwelling assassin club so badly that they would be willing to kill for it.

This is the second movie I've discussed starring Yumiko Shaku; the other being Godzilla x Mechagodzilla. Trust me when I say I'm not intentionally viewing seemingly everything her minor film resume out of any preoccupation with Ms. Shaku. It was simply the luck of the draw that I ended up talking about two of her movies in a row. Besides Yumiko Shaku other familiar faces included Shiro Sano whom you may recognize from a couple of Godzilla movies as well as Mystery of Rampo and Yoichi Numata from the Japanese Ring films. Either there's a pool of regular actors who show up in the Japanese genre pictures I tend to write about or there's a very small group of actors working in Japan at any given time.

Trying to believe that Ms. Shaku was a tough military pilot in GxMG is simplicity itself compared to buying into the idea of her as a super sword-woman. She seems game enough and fight choreographer Donnie Yen does what he can -although her stunt double looks about three sizes bigger than her- but while watching the film I couldn't shake the feeling that the sword weighed more than the actress trying to swing it. Still, I do give her credit for picking weird movie roles. Instead of starring in some frothy little romantic comedy she's showing up in goofy science fiction movies. It's probably not the path she had hoped her career would head in but it has managed to get her movies distributed to an international market for whatever that's worth.

Some movies boast of having a cast of thousands. Princess Blade had a cast of maybe a dozen. With only a house out in the middle of nowhere, some desolate, generic, unpopulated city shots, and the always cheap to film in wooded area, Princess Blade never managed to give the impression that there was a world outside of it's hand full of characters. Bad lighting decisions by director Shinsuke Sato that tried to give the film a stylized look only helped make everything look even more flat and empty. The feeling was so bad that it seemed the only reason that Yuki spent so much time hanging out with Takashi [Hideaki Ito] and his sister is that they were the only people in town.

Is this the best that Japanese cinema can muster nowadays? Are the days of epic period pieces gone, replaced by films so small that it looks like the cast is wearing the clothes they wore to the set that day? Also, the idea of trying to bring a samurai style plot into modern times is intriguing -plus you don't have to pay for all those period costumes- but it also presents a new set of challenges. Too often the film resembles the inexplicable Yojimbo remake Last Man Standing where events happen not because they have any sort of logic to them but because they follow the conventions of the genre that the story is imitating. I wasn't watching a modern day samurai movie but rather someone's concept of what a modern day samurai movie should be. The inclusion of Donnie Yen to help with the fights was another choice that probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead of standard sword fighting the fights featured a lot more kicking, twirling, and other moves you would expect to see in a Hong Kong kung-fu flick. While I could appreciate the melting pot of ideas I was watching -I was sitting on my couch in America watching a Japanese movie that had Chinese style action- no original idea came out that the movie could call it's own. Princess Blade has a great deal of asperations but more often than not it's just some cute girl with a sword jumping around in the woods.

The only time Princess Blade took off was when things got glum. Most of the fight scenes featured, oddly, Yuki getting the tar kicked out of her. During the movie it was hard to determine why everyone was so concerned about her lineage since instead of showing some sort of incredible skill with a sword she spends most of the film's running time getting whomped on. In addition to a heroine who has to take her lumps, the final act of Princess Blade has the few characters populating the movie dropping like flies. By the end of the film Yuki is about the only character left standing. It's a grim ending any way you look at it and even more so when you remember the movie is meant as a vehicle for a pop idol. Princess Blade may not have had much going for it but it did have the strength of it's convictions to follow through on not having a happy ending. That may not seem like much but it's better than films like The Last Samurai could manage.

Questions, comments and suggestions on even more Yumiko Shaku movies I should watch should be sent to gleep9@hotmail.com. If you're done swinging your sword around in here head on back to either the Third Movie or Main page.