Samurai Banners

Japan in the sixteenth century. Kansuke Yamamoto is a warrior nobody will take on, one-eyed and lame. In the end he enters the service of Takeda Shingen, lord of Kai, and before long becomes indispensable. What he wants is the country brought under one banner. He uses war and deception alike to get it. Hiroshi Inagaki directed the film, which Toshirō Mifune both starred in and produced. It runs close to two hours and fifty minutes and the large battle scenes were shot at full scale. The telling does not present Kansuke as a hero; every plan the man lays costs somebody else their life, and the film does not hide it.