Sword of the Stranger

By: Robert Murphy

Our story is set in the Sengoku-era of Japan and a young boy Kotarou and his dog Tobimaru are fleeing from their home that has been attacked and set on fire by unknown enemies. Kotarou escapes to the country with his little dog side kick and runs into a wondering ronin who turns out to have exceptional skill with a sword after he rescues Kotarou from a shadowy solider trying to capture him. This leads to an unlikely pairing of the two as Kotarou employees the ronin, Nanashi, to take him to another temple where he will be safe from the attackers trying to capture him for some unknown reason.

Now from the moment I first started watching Sword of the Stranger I immediately felt myself flashback to when I watch Rurouni Kenshin especially when it came to the action and the animation. Every time you see Nanashi wield his sword you will fall in love with how incredible the action is and it is one of the main draws that the movie has going for it. But this can only take you so far and you know what if the enemy had been a bit more engaging and if I could understand them it would help as well. In the film the language goes from Japanese being translated to English and then not translating the Chinese being spoken and then at points translating the Chinese to English and not translating the Japanese to English, it was very irritating. Then we only learn and get to know one of the enemies on a personal level and that’s Luo-Lang, a large blonde hard man with impressive sword skills of his own who serves as Nanashi chief rival and that’s about it. The rest are just faces in the crowd, they have impressive skills of their own but get little to no screen time and do not service the story in any way.

As for the story itself, I already revealed that there is Chinese speaking in the film and that’s where the unknown enemies who are after Kotarou are from and their reasoning behind it is a little unique for a nation to believe in. These men are sent from China by the Emperor to take Kotarou because they believe he is part of an ingredient that will make an elixir for immortality, seems a bit cultish but I’ll bite. But this wasn’t the only problem I had with the story, theres also the issue of a totally random and obscene moment within the movie where the leader of the army in the city state where the story takes place makes a power move and tries to take over. This was unseen and really unwarranted in my book because the character just wasn’t that engaging enough to pull it off, thank God for Nanashi stepping in or I would have stopped watching.

Sword of the Stranger is a classic example of a movie with excellent action but no real story to it, not only that but it was just down right annoying in dialogue throughout the film. What probably would have saved the film a little bit for me would have been to subtitle the switching of English to other languages because I felt that there was a moment in the final battle where I would of liked to know what Luo-Long was saying. Also there was much more that could have been done on the characters in the film as well, I feel like there were too many holes that the story falls through and maybe this movie would of done better in an anime show rather than a movie but then it would have been a poor version of Rurouni Kenshin.

Good:

- Excellent sword play and gore that doesn’t detract from the film

- Animation and choreographing are something that I did enjoy

Bad:

- Very poor characters

- There is so much left just out there in the story plot wise for the viewer to just except and I didn’t go for it

- The poor transitioning in dialogue from English translation of one language and then English translation of the other with no subtitling to aid in the moments where it was most important

Scully Rating: 4.5 out of 10