Pun Salad

Sometimes you're just in the mood for a good old fashioned samurai movie. And this, my friends, is the real deal, straight from the Land of the Rising Sun. It's a wonderful big-budget epic.

The need for good guys is dire: an evil lord, Naritsugu, has made his way into a position of power. And he uses that power in the most despicable ways imaginable: torture, rape, and murder of the innocent and helpless. (And the movie's pretty explicit about this stuff, so it's not for the kids.)

Taking up the task is the elder samurai Shinzaemon. He assembles a small squad of—well, I guess you know how many—heroes, including his nephew Shinrokuro. It is widely (and correctly) assumed to be a suicide mission; the team approaches it with a strong sense of fatalistic duty. They lay out a plan that will deliver Naritsugu into a spot where he can be attacked, but there are no guarantees.

It sounds pretty serious, and it mostly is. But Shinzaemon has a sly sense of humor. The group runs across a guy named Koyata on their trek through a forest—and he's hilarious.

Not everyone goes for this stuff, but as Lincoln allegedly said: People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.