Throne of Blood
Throne of Blood
| 15 January 1957 (USA)
Throne of Blood Trailers

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

Reviews
BootDigest

Such a frustrating disappointment

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UnowPriceless

hyped garbage

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Humaira Grant

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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Casey Duggan

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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Osmosis Iron

Kurosawa's take on Macbeth, truly magnificent! From the ominous premonition in the Cobweb forest till the unforgettable ending, this film has such a great and natural atmosphere that it feels like this story could not take place anywhere else. Mifune is absolutely great in this. Probably my favorite film from Kurosawa!

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billcr12

Akira Kurosawa was most well known for The Seven Samurai, which was made in America as The Magnificent Seven. I have seen both and they are good films. This movie is from 1957 and is in black and white. The non color aspect gives it a very haunting look. The story comes from Macbeth. An ambitious soldier wishes to take over a castle and will do anything to succeed. He has an equally ambitious wife who also is without scruples. The message is as old as mankind; be careful what you wish for, or, karma can be one hell of a bitch. The cinematography is brilliant, as the horses gallop into the foggy Japanese equivalent of Shakespeare's moors. The bard's tragedies hold up well.

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Smoreni Zmaj

"Kumonosu-jo" is Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth", placed in samurai Japan. This is the first Kurosawa's movie I saw and probably next-to-last. I will see one more, because I can't write off the man based on one movie only, but if next one is like this one I'm giving up on Kurosawa. "Macbeth" is good story, you can easily get used to Japanese over-acting, but the way Kurosawa stretches out every scene to last forever is something I can't get used to. It is a fact that every cadre is work of art, but if I wanted to watch each cadre five minutes I would go to the photo exhibition, not the cinema. Two riders ride through mist in complete silence for full three minutes. No dialogue, no body language, just two silhouettes in the fog. And so every scene. The film could easily be cut in half without a scene being thrown out. The cultural differences of the East and the West are story for themselves in which objectivity does not play any role. Armored samurai, with the lower part of pajamas and ridiculous helmets, look like clowns rather than soldiers. And the music played during opening credits is terrible creaking that made my ears bleed. I read some texts about this film that helped me understand it better and to some extent I understand why it is considered a big movie, but even that did not make me like it. My subjective impression is4/10

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sunheadbowed

My favourite Macbeth cinema adaptation, Akira Kurosawa takes an already spooky play and places it in a haunted feudal period Japan, complete with evil spirits and forests of death. Not to mention the most foreboding and eerie-looking mist you'll ever see on screen.The old Japanese obsessions of fate and evil spirits result in a more convincing story than witches and kings could have in this environment, yet it still feels very loyal to the original story.'Throne of Blood' is a minimalist and bleak film: all extraneous characters from the main plot in the play are excised, creating a tight and focused work; the film seems shorter than its 110 minutes.The brilliant Toshiro Mifune's ultimate demise to a rainfall of arrows is a wonderfully insane performance, worthy of Klaus Kinski at his peak.

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