Blu-ray Review: Crazy Samurai 400 vs 1 (2020)

Legendary samurai swordsman Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi of Versus and Battlefield Baseball fame) is all hot and bothered to put the murder on the head of a rival clan… but it turns out the newly elected leader is all of nine years old.
Musashi gives that the loudest “fuck it” of all time and kills the tyke with zero hesitation. This causes hundreds upon hundreds of samurai warriors to descend upon Musashi and begin a fight sequence that lasts seventy-seven minutes… and is presented in a single take. And that is the entirety of the plot.
How well Crazy Samurai  works for you will be your willingness to commit to that conceit, as it’s all sword fighting and nothin’ else for an incredibly long time, and while that may seem like a gimmick… and Satan knows it truly fuckin’ is… it’s damn impressive nevertheless.
Gone is the hyper-kinetic, comic book style violence you may expect, and in it’s place we get quick, precise slashes that dispatch most enemies (though things do get a bit on the video game side with some fighters being visual different from the horde stepping into the “boss battle” role). This helps keep the astonishing odds against our hero seem realistic and grounded, and adds immeasurably to the engagement of the piece.
I do have to mention that I did expect a bit more arterial spray flung across the film’s locales, but alas the limited bloodshed on display is of the weak CG variety, so gore hounds take note (though to be fair the epilogue of the film gets a bit more brutal).
As for special features on this Blu-ray from WellGo USA Entertainment we get two trailers for the film, and that’s all she wrote.
To sum it up; Crazy Samurai is a spectacle well worth taking in, especially if you dig on the chambara genre… just don’t expect over-the-top carnage splashing across the screen (and yes, I realize that sounds ridiculous considering the body-count present here).