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Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I know Kurosawa is considered to be in the deified handful of the greatest directors in the world. It is sacrosanct to call anything he creates as anything other than a masterpiece. Seven Samurai is rightfully considered such since it has been remade and re-remade as well as specific scenes outright stolen for more recent movies. But Rashomon is no Seven Samurai. It isn't remotely in the same universe of quality, pace or sheer entertainment value. For this movie to be sitting on nearly every "name" critic's all-time greatest movies is utter nonsense. Did they watch the same movie I just did???I know, I know. Anyone who doesn't hear angels singing after watching Rashomon is a bloody brain-dead derelict. Before you crucify me - and you're welcome to do so - read these logical statements, then tell me how "AMAZING" this movie is:1) This is based on a 20 page SHORT STORY. The short story is exciting, has multiple perspectives, whodunit excellence with surprising twists throughout. This movie - using the exact same plot - runs 88 MINUTES. You're welcome to tell me where the extra hour of boredom was needed. Editing, editing, editing... 2) The cinematography is considered to be stunning. Sure, if you consider that M*A*S*H using the Santa Monica mountains as war-torn Korea would be considered stunning. It's just an overgrown backyard. Shot in B&W. Hand me a camcorder and watch me film my 10-acre backyard and you'll see some pretty amazing shrubbery too but it doesn't mean I'm a master cinematographer. Just because they have a shoe-string budget doesn't mean it has to be filmed like you have a shoe-string budget. 3) The woodcutter goes into the woods to chop wood for his home. Here's the thing... He's looking for ONE TREE!!! Paul Bunyan he is not. He walks past literally hundreds. Yet the guy walks for FIVE MINUTES before he comes upon the murder scene. How far was this numbskull going to drag the tree??? I refer back to #1 above. 4) So much is made of Toshiro Mifune being such an incredible actor. A "scene stealer" is what I read almost universally. Here's the thing about an overactor... when someone is SOOOO out of control, it doesn't matter how good the other actors are in a scene, they can't play off them and continue in a natural arc. Watch this buffoon "act". Kurosawa freezes on Mifune's face over and over (and over...) to show how intense he is. His wild actions, his running all over the flipping place for no reason, his staring into the clouds but comes out to yell at the guy TALKING TO A JUDGE about how stupid he is, the grunting that is positively unnatural... Scene chewing is not good acting. If this was a real person, he'd be in an institution forever and be forgotten. Instead, Mifune is not only considered a good actor, he's considered a GREAT actor. By what estimation? Conveying thought and emotion through logical action and restraint is acting. A lunatic is not exciting to watch. Especially when it's the same lunatic in every Kurosawa movie I've seen. Mifune is literally a cartoon character in a serious drama. I'll refer back to the canonical Seven Samurai and say the ONLY negative in that movie is Mifune's ridiculous overacting. It was painful. 5) The maiden... Oh, where to begin... Okay, she's supposed to be beautiful. A "goddess" is what Mifune's character calls her. Yet... she has zero eyebrows and two dark smudges halfway up her forehead throughout. She cries INCESSANTLY. I mean for a loooong time. No words, just crying. She's been raped. Her husband is bound up with ropes (I'll get to that in a moment). She's basically worthless to both men now by no doing of her own. I get it. But... She sits there with her husband tied up WHILE HOLDING A DAGGER and she cries and cries and cries without cutting the guy's ropes?? Plot points have to give way to logic sometimes. But her crying. Her screaming. Her CRAZY rant. This woman is bonafide insane. Talk about overacting. I refer back to #1 about pacing. 6) The husband. This guy is a SAMURAI??? Yeah, and I'm Abraham Lincoln. Every chance he gets, he NEVER pulls his sword. EVER. He follows an obviously deranged individual DEEP into the forest for no apparent reason other than a promise of swords we never see and leaves his unarmed, innocent wife in the distance in outlaw-infested woods. He's subdued in the most amazingly cringe-worthy wrestling match where neither party ever lands a punch OR pulls a sword. He's tied up with ONE rope wrapped around his biceps. He never tried standing up while he was alone for hours?? There's a reason Kurosawa didn't create "EIGHT SAMURAI" since this guy washed out in casting. 7) The sword fight(s). WTF??? Who taught these dumbasses to fight? One guy is an infamous outlaw. The other guy is supposed to be a samurai. Yet neither of them go for dozens of open kill shots, or dismembering an appendage, or even PUNCHES the other guy. They chase each other all over Timbuktu without ever actually FIGHTING. They actually drop their swords multiple times, throw LEAVES at each other (I kid you not!), and Mifune actually THROWS his sword at the Samurai. Seriously. And the Samurai just waits for it... OMG!!! "We crossed swords 23 times. Nobody has ever crossed swords more than 20 times with me!" Look, I'm not looking for the Olympic fencing team, but my 5yo with a plastic sword would have the common sense to try to lop off an arm or a leg or a head in 5 seconds when his life was on the line. A sword FIGHT means swinging, not running for the hills. BOTH of them. MULTIPLE TIMES! A fight to the death? Uh-huh. Dullest battle of all time. Again, referring back to #1 above. 8) The opening scene. The guys look like it's the most horrific thing they've ever seen/heard -- for a VERY LONG TIME. They say there are six unnamed dead bodies laying on the fence with their own mystery over yonder, yet nobody bothers to try to figure out their story. Grab a medium and let's hear THEIR stories. I'll bet they're at least as boring... I mean, interesting. 9... The ending... Oh, never mind. You get the picture.I don't live in a cave. I love foreign, well-made, artistic movies when they have a point. I've seen literally thousands of movies. I consider myself to be fairly literate and conscious of what makes a piece of beautiful art. The problem with this picture is: A movie is meant to entertain. If you bore your audience to death, you have lost the battle. It's a murder. Every witness will have a different story. Welcome to the life of a police detective. This story is not worthy of an 88-minute movie. Having a ghost speak is an interesting touch, but even that is overdone and becomes silly.This movie is nowhere near a top-250 list. The 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list is a joke for including this. If this movie deserves the classy, fantastic Criterion treatment, then so does Dumb and Dumber as far as watchability is concerned. That one had a decent idea too originally - AND it is entertaining. This one not only has the over-exposed Mifune, but it's just a bore to watch. Go ahead and flame me. But before you do, read my logical points above and tell me you haven't seen movies YOU have rated below 5 for being slow/boring/stupid/whatever and tell me they don't have more entertainment value than this. Kurosawa missed on this one. Please stop drinking the Kurosawa koolaid and think logically for a moment. That's all I ask. This should have been 30 mins. No longer. Spliced together with another two half-hour mysteries and that might be worth watching. As this stands, it's a waste of time. Watch any old Perry Mason rerun on television and you'll have more value. The action will be better and the acting will be refreshing compared to this snorefest.My last point... Any director that gives us FOUR different perspectives to a murder, then literally doesn't give the audience a resolution is a total cop-out. Choose an end and live with it. At least "Clue" had four endings but screened it in different markets with an end for each audience. Basic Movie Making 101: A movie has a beginning, middle and END (re: resolution!!!!). Ambivalent endings by a director is not "art", it's just lazy. Nothing more.

A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view. Rashômon is a japanese drama that instead of making people cry it makes them laugh and get bored and that's unfortunately sums up pretty much most of the movies that i have seen from the Top 250 films of all time so far and it's pretty sad i guess now as far as acting goes? the movie was horrible, as far as story goes? pretty much same level as well and as far as script goes? same track as well and if you love this kind of movies see it but if not? skip it and watch something else..

The main reason Rashomon is such a classic is due to it ( much like Citizen Kane ) being one of the first movies to use a non linear way of storytelling, using flashbacks in order to tell a story from different subjective perspectives. Which results in a fascinating storytelling experience.It is also an effective tale about the human nature to lie, and about the human nature of selfishness, as all of the stories in the movie differ in a way that favors the one telling it. No character is truly likeable, but that's the way Kurosawa wanted it to be. They do not have to be likeable as long as they are well developed, and that it is. The characters are telling the story to an unseen Judge behind the camera, basically telling it to the audience themselves. There are no definite answers, as it all comes down to the human nature to lie. There is minimal dialogue as Kurosawa understood the beautiful cinematography and the faces could speak for themselves. It is both an effective visual and psychological experience.One of the couple of gripes, however, is a couple of overacting sequences, ridiculous hysterical yelling that seemingly comes out of nowhere ( Especially by everyone's favorite Toshiro Mifune, who in all other ways, was brilliant ), and the relatively short running time.However, all in all it makes Rashomon an effective and revolutionary movie due to its non linear concept, and is definitely up there as another one of Kurosawa's masterpieces in his extraordinary career.

I recently had a conversation with one of my friends about how much we liked films shot in a forest in black and white. It seems that forests and art-house cinema go hand in hand (i.e. SEVENTH SEAL, MARKETA LAZAROVA etc.) Of these RASHOMON may be the earliest, popularizing the setting through avant-garde techniques that would seem audacious even if made today. Breaking continuity, pointing the camera directly at the sun, constantly tracking from beneath twigs and branches. At times the cinematography appears almost impressionist, blending the characters into the background, literally forcing man to become a part of nature. This immersion of man into nature comes at a point when we are expecting excitement and action. Entering a flashback prefaced by horror and death, Kurosawa instead decides to spend 3 minutes tracking a woodsman as he wanders through the forest. In one of the most brilliant sequences I have ever seen put to film, Kurosawa introduces man at its most honest, alone, and unassuming. When the woodsman stumbles upon the deceased samurai, his hands are splayed upwards, mirroring the branches that framed the woodsman previously. All of this acts as a preface to Kurosawa's exploration of the folly of mankind through lies, manipulation, and hyperbole. The very nature of film is to exaggerate and embellish characters by placing them into easily understandable categories of protagonist and antagonist. Here Kurosawa exposes this by retelling the exact same narrative 3 different ways, with each character placing themselves as the murderer, only pretending to be in control of their own actions. It is only until the 4th version, where the woodsman appears to tell the "truest" version of this story, exposing how fragile these people really are. Note that I say truest since his story is the only version of the events that are revealed to be an outright lie because of the exclusion of the bejeweled dagger. When we witness the fight sequence between the samurai and Tajomaru, the bandit, the first time it appears well choreographed like an elaborate dance number, with Tajomaru noting that he fought honorably and crossed swords 36 times. When we see the fight scene the second time, however, it is much more barbaric and fearful. The fright appearing through the slight trepidation on Mifune's hand during the battle. This dissonance between the perceived "noble" samurai and the brutality of war would be explored 4 years later in Kurosawa's own SEVEN SAMURAI. Many times throughout the film institutions based on trust and the unknown are explored, such as the priest and the medium. Their reliance only affirmed by the others' willingness to believe them. The film ends with a man stealing a blanket from a baby. When confronted by the priest he affirms his actions by shouting that we are no different from dogs. Selfishness is the only thing that provides for self-preservation and you can't trust anybody but yourself. This idea shatters the priests faith as this solipsistic notion puts all of mankind at odds against itself, painting a backdrop of war and conflict as a continuation of false bravado and self aggrandizement. At this point when the axeman tries to take the baby off of the priest's hands he is met with hostility as there would be no way to trust a bandit with the fate of a small child. It is not until the bandit reveals that he already has 6 other's that the priest reaffirms his faith by allowing himself to believe a complete stranger. Although this may seem like a tacked on happy ending, the film has set us up to assume that we cannot put our trust in anything but our own perceptions. The bandit could very well be lying to the priest and kidnapping the child for alternative reasons. Like the religion the priest blindly follows, mankind is an institution that we have to either commit to fully or not at all.