GI Samurai

GI Samurai

The premise at first seems to be straight from the pages of a sci-fi manga story, or possibly an idea thrown about during Twilight Zone scripting meets before being thrown out when budget considerations came into play.
The idea of a modern day battalion transported centuries back in time to come up against the swords and bows of the samurai era could easily be played for laughs, but instead GI Samurai follows a more realist tack looking at how the soldiers learn to accept what’s happened and work out what to do next. Soon after a group of Japanese self defence force soldiers experience a mysterious incidence of time travel, a samurai approaches them and persuades Sonny Chiba’s Lieutenant Yoshiaki Iba to side with him against a local rival army. After making short work of their newfound enemy using a tank and jeep-mounted machine gun, the lord hatches a plan to overthrow the emperor himself and march on Edo.
For an actor famous for playing ass-kicking yakuza and street fighters, Sonny Chiba is refreshingly three dimensional as a man first cautious of making too big an impact in the past, before seeing his chance to wage actual warfare and win, embracing the challenge with gusto. As the film progresses we see just how adaptable the seemingly backward forces were, formulating strategies to defeat the technically superior modern firepower with liberal use of ninjas (though not the stereotypical black pyjamas and balaclavas kind).
Beyond the battles themselves we have other elements among the troops, one man ‘going native’ and dropping out of the fight to stay with a peasant surrogate family, one man supposed to be married shortly ends up attracting a lady who then obsessively follows the troops, whilst we see flash-forwards of his fiancee waiting for him in the present, and one soldier who is openly hostile to Iba’s authority goes rogue with a few men, stealing a boat and raping and pillaging terrified villagers along the coast.
Best of all is samurai Kagetora who enlists Iba’s help. Played by Isao Natsuyagi, he has a childlike glee when the new, powerful weapons suddenly become available to him, but his cunning is more than a match for any of the present-day warriors.
GI Samurai is a superior sci-fi “What if?” feature and is well worth checking out.