Very entertaining Kihachi Okamoto feature, and while it is a WWII film, it is also a tribute to John Ford’s Westerns, set in Manchuria. In addition to the regulars in the series, a fine performance by the always lovely Kumi Mizuno.
One of Okamoto’s trademarks is his recessive staging, i.e. the big foreground wide-angle look, the kind of wide-screen composition which is quite common in spaghetti westerns, particularly those of Sergio Leone’s (partly due to the technical problems of the Techniscope format, widely used in Italy in that period). We could notice this signature in Okamoto’s late 50s films already, that is, a few years earlier than Leone and other western directors.Read More »
