Watch Hirokin: The Last Samurai For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

at the first sigh, it is awful. for the crap story, for the unrealistic fight scenes, for the exile of Wes Bentley in a role so far by him. at the second sigh , a compensation is discovered . Hirokin in reasonable support for remind scenes and characters from many Sci Fi / fantastic movies. John Carter or Dune, off course, but not only. the stories about heroes from the childhood, the brave young men against evil leaders, the fantasy from the decades "50 - "70 are a kind of aura of this modest film about nothing. because all is well known and the only purpose of director to have another title in his filmography. the only real sin - the reference to Japan. Hirokin could have many identities. but he has the bad luck to not be a samurai.

Space samurai on a distant planet says you? yes please says I. The villain played by the dastardly devilish looking Julian Sands?? oh my! this sounds great! Wes Bentley says you? hmm OK not bad, not bad, but I've gone slightly soft now.Plus points...the film looks pretty sweet, its basic with obvious sets and errr...a handful of bad guys, villagers and good guys used over and over but the location work looks nice. Set on the distant desert planet of Aradius you can see straight away certain similarities to many other sci-fi/fantasy films, need I list them? So everything looks very familiar yet admittedly rather nice with use of sunsets, twilight, dusk, early morning etc...the colours and hues are gorgeous at times.Apart from that the film is your standard by the numbers chosen one styled plot line. A lone warrior saves a small tribe of people (aliens that look exactly like humans) from a tyrant human played by Sands naturally. All the bad guys look like Imperial guards from 'ROTJ' and Sands looks suspiciously like Sting in 'Dune'.Its all very clichéd and run of the mill stuff, yet the whole point is lost on me, I have no real clue what's in it for the evil Julian Sands to do what he does. Angus Macfadyen is the Yoda-like Master, the all powerful leader, warrior and rebel who must train the eager Hirokin, cue lots of training montages set against facial close ups and with many shadows and silhouettes.There seems to be a lot more style over substance really, very arty and nice to look at but behind that its pretty crappy stuff really. Doesn't really make much sense, why would a distant planet in the future (or so I assume) utilize the ancient Japanese samurai way of life, war and culture? where do they get their fuel, water and food from? etc...I could go on but I won't.Shame the people/aliens of this poor village seem to totally outnumber the bad guys (but why would they even stay in this village?, the area offers nothing...leeeeave it!!). Oh and this alien race are called Arids. You see what they have done there? Arids...Arabs? or maybe because the planet they live on is arid?...ah beats the sh*t outta me.Its a nice slice of B-movie sci-fi hokum that will please some fans of the genre. Its fun harmless stuff and Bentley does look the part I admit. May I suggest a better choice, if you like sci-fi hokum then I recommend 'Hunter Prey' which is a much better ride.4/10

Hirokin did have a good idea going for it, unfortunately it now joins the already quite big pile of movies that badly executed their good ideas. The best thing about it is some exotic scenery, but that's it. And even then you can't really enjoy it because the camera work and editing is so lazy and amateurish. The special effects are also rather unfinished looking and like they were shoe-horned in pretty much last minute, and the choreography and fight scenes have no energy or momentum, just clumsily done all round. The music is at best generic, it can be annoying also and it doesn't sound as though it entirely fits with everything else. Hearing the dialogue, I got the impression that the writers didn't bother to make sure that what they wrote actually made any kind of sense, it just rambles on, sounds awkward and often doesn't seem to really mean anything. The story aside from being highly derivative is dull, lacking in any thrills or fun and so predictable to the extent that you are constantly correctly guessing what happens next. There is nothing interesting or likable about the characters here, they are little more than severely underwritten archetypes, especially the villains that are among the most laughable of any movie. The acting is terrible especially the bland and wholly unheroic lead(he has the looks but not the acting chops), even Julian Sands, most likely the most well-known actor in the cast, manages to give a flat and really quite insipid performance. Angus Macfadyen likewise. Overall, Hirokin did have good potential that is wasted by really bad execution. Not the worst I've ever seen, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything redeeming regarding the movie. 1/10 Bethany Cox

People are comparing this to some big $50 million dollar studio films which it is simply not. It had an extremely small budget, but looks absolutely nothing like a low-budget movie. The fact that it's confusing people into thinking it was a studio movie is technically a really good thing.Think about it, the cinematography, the quality of the film it was shot on, the posters, the CGI, the sound effects and the score, everything about the movie is able to compete with big budget studio movies-that's impressive. Some of the actors aren't the best and the story isn't groundbreaking, but that's not unusual for indie movies especially when there are hundreds of movies with an entire cast of terrible actors (Hirokin had Wes Bentley as the lead) much worse than in Hirokin. It even has some surprising side-characters. The two stoner-buddy smugglers are extremely funny.When you think about it like this, Hirokin is an achievement. An independent sci-fi action film is unheard of and extremely ambitious these days. Most indie movies involve characters sitting in an apartment or storefront and talking about hyper-specific culturally sensitive idiosyncratic topics and ideas for extremely niche audiences while Hirokin has SFX, an orchestral score, and looks like it was shot on another planet. Also Hirokin can travel internationally just fine.Hirokin is not a 'studio blunder' like John Carter-it is a new breed of indie film that is able to confuse you into thinking it was a studio level movie.