Watch Sanshiro Sugata Part Two For Free

Wonderful Movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

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

Blistering performances.

At first I was surprised by the opening scene in which an American sailor gets thrown into the river by the title character, in that it was just after the war. What follows is fairly pedestrian, the title character agrees to fight the American, who is a champion boxer, There are parts in this film about honor and being true to yourself and, while its a watchable film, it just barely holds up. You do not get hardly any character development, and no buildup that is interesting enough to sustain. Even in the Rocky films (except Rocky 5) Stallone made you anticipate the big event. So, what you have here is passable, but it in no way points to the amazing brilliance of his later films. Check it out without expecting too much.

From frame one, it's clear that SANSHIRO SUGATA II is pure propaganda: the sound splashing of the arrogant American (a boxer who picks on poor, defenseless rickshaw drivers) is about as subtle as a knee to the groin. The detachment with which this movie is directed is truly mind-boggling: there's absolutely no room whatsoever for any kind of balanced assessment of it as anything BUT propaganda. As someone who learned to box by watching and then emulating the likes of Muhammad Ali and Roberto Duran (I would bust my hands up working out on a duffle bag filled with cinderblocks and old clothes, then walk down the street carrying two pair of boxing gloves in a neighborhood notorious for gang fights), I took exception to the portrayal of the fistfighter(s) in this movie. (Though, to be fair, I also took exception to Paul Newman's performance in SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME and Sylvester Stallone's ROCKY sequels.) To this very day, judoka and karateka have had a hard time of it in full contact martial arts while "strikers" (i.e.; cage fighters who primarily use their fists, more often than not after training under boxing coaches) or grapplers (wrestlers or jujitsu players) have fared better. In SANSHIRO SUGATA II, Fujita manages to defeat the Western boxer- referred to as "the greatest boxer in the world"- with a single throw. One throw, and the guy's finished... Not in the Real World. One can't help but recall the way the leaders of the Boxer Rebellion prepared their Faithful for their assault on the bastions of the West- by firing blanks at them to reassure them that the Western weapons wouldn't give them a moment's pause... So much for propaganda. That's not to say that there's nothing of value here: there are some genuinely funny moments (Fujita falling asleep while meditating, only to awaken and find his sensei still upright but also asleep and his exit from his dojo, as he pauses every few feet to look back at his ever-bowing lady love, etc.) and the series of dissolves showing his rickshaw driver from the opening sequence as he evolves into a hardened judoka and the two crazy karateka and and... There's more, of course (this being, after all, an Akira Kurosawa movie, with all that that entails), but the heavy-handed politics get in the way of the storytelling. Kurosawa dealt effectively with politics in other films, but only when the grip wasn't so tight.

Sanshiro Sugata 2 (1945) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Kurosawa's sequel has Sugata (Susumu Fujita) still growing in the world of judo but outsiders are wanting to make the fighting style a sport and put it up against American boxing. This is a rather strange film but I do think it's better than the original just because of how out there it is. I've read that the government forced Kurosawa into making this and you can tell because that plays a part in the film. American boxing is really looked down upon and fighting as a sport is shown to be evil and this really translates to Kurosawa being unhappy as he was forced to make this just like the characters here are being forced to do something they see as morally wrong. Seeing the different fighting styles mixed up together was pretty fun as was the ending, which takes place during a snow storm. Fujita is a lot better here than he was in the previous film and really delivers a strong performance and makes his character quite memorable with the difficulties that he faces. The film's biggest problem comes in form of some rather choppy storytelling that has the film wonder off from its main goal way too many times and this is certainly true in the final fifteen-minutes before the final showdown. The low-budget nature of the film also shines through in a negative way but I'm sure the fans of the director will want to watch this at least once.

There were many reasons I was unimpressed by this film, though one had was certainly not the fault of anyone connected with the movie. Because this it is rarely seen, and it's hard to come by. I finally found both part one and two as an import from MEI AH Laser Disc Company--and boy did THAT leave a lot to be desired. The quality of the print was very poor (though MUCH worse on this sequel--the final fight sequence almost looks like it was a fight between two shadows) and the captioning was beyond abominable! When my daughter saw part of it, she immediately recognized the problem. It seems that many Japanese movies are released by Chinese companies, so the movie is translated from Japanese to Chinese and finally to English--and so much was lost in the translation it practically ruined the experience. For example, "JUDO" is translated as either "Karate" or "Kung Fu" in the movie. For two movies about Judo, the word NEVER appears in the subtitled version! Also, countless sentences simply make no sense--it's as if the words are almost random at times.Part two sacrifices some of the quality seen in part one because the movie obviously is intended as a propaganda flick. Instead of a struggle between rival judo studios, at times, it is a rivalry between judo and stupid Americans. Particularly at the beginning of the movie, the American shown is quite a pig and intended to stir the audience. Now some of this can be forgiven, after all, Americans made many propaganda films as well in which the enemy was seen as almost subhuman. However, it is disturbing to think that the extras used in this film were almost certainly POWs forced to act! My advice is to see any of Kurasawa's post ww2 films--they are indeed masterpieces!