Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 6:6	Budget Small

A mystical warrior stumbles across a town with two tyrants? That seems familiar.

As the movie opens we see our hero, Kain, walking through a desert wasteland. Seeing a wisp of smoke, he changes direction and soon stumbles upon a town with a single source of water and two opposing factions vying for its control. Kain attempts to get some water from the well but is challenged by the guard. On old man intercedes to prevent what he believes would be Kain's death and brings him to a dwelling that may have been a place of worship at one time. Kain and the audience are both surprised to see a religious icon that matches the symbol on his sword. A quick bit of exposition from the old man seems to settle Kain down. He has a couple drinks of water and returns to the well and hands out some serious ass kicking to the guards. Kain hires on with one side until he is betrayed, then switches sides. He plays both sides against each other for a while, gets the crap beat out of him, gets better, gets a magic sword and saves the day and then rides off into the sunsets.

Okay, so this is an Argentinean remake of Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo but you don't need to know that to enjoy the movie. I saw The Warrior and the Sorceress long before I saw Yojimbo and seeing the original has not changed my mind about this movie a bit. Well, maybe a little; I am really impressed with how well they ripped off the original. Yojimbo is about a masterless Samurai who is wandering around Japan. Coming to a crossroad, he throws some straw in the air and lets it guide him to a town where two warring factions are making life miserable for the villagers. Because of his taint (a masterless Samurai was assumed to have either outlived his master or to have been turned out in disgrace), both sides are willing to take Yojimbo on as a mercenary. He starts to play the two sides against each other. His only friend is town is the coffin maker. Yojimbo manages to save the lives of a family he was supposed to execute and sends them out of town. The father of the family returns to town to pay his respects to Yojimbo despite being warned not to. Yojimbo is found out and beaten severely before he is able to sneak away to safety. Once he has recovered, he completes the downfall of the two tyrants and rides off into the sunset.

While it sounds simple to rip off another movie, it is not. Too often the filmmakers miss the things that made the original great. Changes are made that completely destroy the subtle relationships in the original. Sexes are changed, motivations are missed, key plot points are ignored. King Kong, Godzilla and The Wickerman were not improved by being remade despite huge amounts of money being spent on them. So how does a does a $1.98 beauty queen from Argentina succeed where a multi-million dollar Miss Universe fails? Mostly by good casting, solid writing, and paying attention to the little things. Carradine does a great job as the Yojimbo replacement. He looks world weary, used but not used up. You get the feeling that he has been through this before and that he knows what to do. A key element to both movies is the question as to whether or not the good guy is actually a good guy. This comes from his reluctance to bring others in to the plan. The secrecy makes sense both because he wants to avoid being found out and to keep collateral damage down to a minimum. But it does make him look suspicious. In both movies this is reinforced by an incident where the hero helps someone unnecessarily and get the shit kicked out of him for it. This is one of the key elements in the original that the copy did not ignore. The hero is shown to be human, he could be hurt, or die, or just plain fail. And that makes him one of us. Without this the movie is just another infallible hero story. You never question whether John McClane is going lose or whether his motives are pure. It is a key element to the original that we question the hero's intentions and any remake without it is going to be lacking something.

Making the switch from a Samurai to a "Homeric" was necessary and handled well. Calling the warrior priests Homeric is a clever touch. Homer is the Greek author who wrote Odyssey and the Iliad; two great tales with heroes that were not above using guile to achieve their goals. Further Yojimbo and Kain are secure enough in there herodom to risk public scorn. Partly this is because both castes would have considered the villagers beneath them in a way. But largely they both are merely doing what they believe needs to be done. The fact that is dangerous to the point of suicidal does not really factor into their decision. Attempting to explain their deceit to others would be of no value (as I have mentioned, it would increase their risk) and so it is not done. In the opening of Yojimbo we see him pause at a fork in the road. He picks up a few blades of grass and throws them in the air. When they fall on one path, that is the direction he goes. Okay, so there is no subtle shading here. He asks the gods to help him decide where to go, so when he gets to the town he is directed to, it is not like he has a lot of choice in what to do next. Hmm, bad guys harassing the peaceful townsfolk, I wonder what the gods are trying to tell him. Kain on the other hand see a plume of smoke and moves towards it. Once he is there, he stumbles across some remnants of his religious order including a priestess and someone who seems to be important to the religion but not very bright. In Yojimbo the peasant family he was supposed to kill is the stand in for the priestess and her father; characters that he risks his life for and a clue that his motives are pure.

Which brings us to the priestess. Naja is played by Maria Socas and spends the entire movie in matching thongs and scarves. Seriously the woman is practically naked the entire movie. I've mentioned in the past that I think that any religion with ceremonies involving gorgeous naked women can't be all bad (see The Kiss). Naja is being held captive by Zeg (Luke Askew) in the hopes that she will create "The Sword of Yura" for him. Naja refuses to do the ceremony correctly and Zeg seems to be loosing his patience with her, still he keeps her around. Possibly this has something to do with the fact that she has a great body and an aversion to clothes? Frequently in movies (especially Hollywood movies), we might get a little flash of the leading lady semi-naked at the start of the film. This is supposed to make us want to watch the rest of the movie just in case she takes off more of her clothes. Typically as we get to know the leading lady better, she ends up wearing more clothes. Yeah, doesn't happen here. Socas wears thongs and scarves. Period. On the two occasions that a cloak is thrown over her, it doesn't cover up anything. Yojimbo does not have any nudity, so this is something the writers thought of all on their own. I wonder if the wardrobe sessions went something this:

Director: For the opening scene where you are shown making ceremonial gestures to the suns, you'll be wearing this.
Socas: Um, a thong and a scarf?
Director: Yes. Now for the escape from the dungeon, you'll be wearing this outfit.
Socas: Another thong and scarf?
Director: Yes, you'll notice it is colored to blend in with the dungeon, sort of like camouflage. Now for the big battle scene you'll be wearing this outfit.
Socas: Oh, goody. A flesh colored scarf and thong set. I was sort of hoping for real warrior costume; chain mail, armour, that kind of thing.
Director: Seriously? Have you seen our budget? We spent most of the money on that lizard thing and the four-breasted dancing girl.

Our bad guys are pretty interesting themselves (fortunately they stay clothed). Bal Caz (William Marin) and Zeg (Luke Askew) are both extremes. Bal Caz reminds us of a Roman emperor with his decadent lifestyle. On our initial foray into Bal Caz's stronghold we see him being feed delicacies while he presides over an orgy. Zeg's domain, however, is like an army camp with much brawling and fighting. Wow, first a reference to Homer and now a suggestion of Nero's Rome with a morally questionable Caesar and a strong military arm. You know, it is almost like the writers actually thought about the screenplay. Bal Caz has a lizard as an advisor. Perhaps this is the special effect that most of Ms. Socas's wardrobe money was spent on but if so she still was going to be spending a lot of time topless. Lets just be charitable and say that the lizard is not terrible, I mean you can't actually see the hinge that lets the jaw move up and down. Zeg's Captain of the Guards, Keif (Anthony DeLongis) also spends a lot of the movie topless. And suspicious. He suspects Kain right from the start or perhaps he is just worried that Kain will take his job but at any rate he doesn't trust Kain. Neither bad guy is really fleshed out, they both are stereotypical (Bal Caz seems to have inherited his good fortune while Zeg clearly took his by force) though they both are shown with at least a little depth. Zeg more so but that could be because we spend more time with him.

One of the running jokes in the movie (though I don't think it was meant to be) is that every time Kain asks for a certain amount of gold pieces, the bad guy just happens to have a bag on hand with exactly that much in it. No matter where they are. That the bags seem to vary in inverse proportion to the amount asked for is just an added bonus. When Kain sneaks in to Zeg's chambers to sell him information on Bal Caz's latest treachery, Zeg is counting his gold pieces. When Kain states a number, he grimaces and then grabs a bag which apparently has exactly the right amount. I guess the writer and director wanted to get the point across that the despots were anxious and grasping at anything that would help out their situation, but still it ends up being funny.

There is a great scene at Zeg's dinner table. Zeg is bored watching the guys fight, so he has a girl thrown in a tank of water and drowned. While he watches this he goads Kain by asking him whether the girl should live or die. Kain shrugs and says "you're the master". So we get an insight into Zeg. This could be viewed as his way of denying himself some of life's pleasures, i.e., sex. In his frugal way, he gets rid of a temptation and tests Kain. John McClane would not have let an innocent die like that, well at least not without grimacing and whining. Kain seems uncomfortable with the situation and when Zeg makes a comment about death, Kain replies "there are no lessons in death, only victory or defeat" which sounds profound but I have no idea what he means by it. This is another situation where Kain has to bide his time. His game plan does not include directly taking on the entire army, this would end the movie too soon as it would likely get him killed. For the audience it does not settle the question of his motives. We still wonder if he is really just doing all this for the money.

My Fanboy fawning over this movie makes it is pretty obvious that I think it is worth viewing. The photography is quite good and the sets are all well lit. The fight choreography is not bad either, especially when Carradine and DeLongis finally come to blows. Add in the amount of time Maria Socas stands in front of the camera, (did I mention that she was topless?) and that is reason enough to watch the film. But the real reason that the film is worth watching is because the writer and the director stole a great story and didn't fuck it up. They looked at the elements that made Yojimbo a classic and successfully translated them to a barbarian story. Sergio Leone had already translated the story to a Western (For a Fistful of Dollars) and he got it right as well. Perhaps someday I'll get around to reviewing Desert Heat; a movie that not only does a poor job with the story but features Gabrielle Fitzpatrick and Jamie Pressly without getting either of them out of their clothes.

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