Hirokin: The Last Samurai (2012)

So much average

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Thankfully bought at my local Poundland, I had been tempted by the nice artwork of Hirokin for a couple of years. But a gut feeling was saying wait.Wait until you find it at a pound, then think twice again.But I got it. I was expecting Star Wars meets Six String Samurai, but instead got, well, I actually don't know what that was!Slow, boring and with painfully uninteresting fight scenes, Hirokin plays like a slow burning Japanese samurai epic, well it feels like it in running time, but has the flair of a film students documentary on watching paint dry.Nope. Just nope. There was no need!

I once saw a movie that was worse than this. once. This movie is a horrible amalgamation of Star Wars, The Last Samurai and Gladiator. In the film our hero Hirokin and his wife get captured by an evil overlord named Phoenix. Somehow or another, Hirokin escapes and wanders off into the desert. He meets a fat, balding, Yoda-like guy who teaches him "the way" which is like the force but not really. after He's learned "the way" he "unites the tribes" which turn out to be like 30 people in total. Then he goes back and fights the evil Phoenix in a ring of guards, he kills Phoenix but is mortally wounded himself and dies.In this basic recycled plot, the writer/director sprinkles in some other things that have no baring on the story and end up not being important. for example, a hovercraft that looks like Jabba's barge; An implied love triangle involving Yoda's daughter; two Irish idiots for comic relief and a half hour of Discovery Chanel nature shots. There are blatant ripoffs throughout the movie. The Irish idiots are lifted from Hidden Fortress; They took Jedi robes and gave them unhemmed edges; the ending is from Gladiator, complete with a grassy field vision and to top it all off, a Black Obi Wan Kenobi that had nothing to do with the plot. You could make a drinking game where everyone has to do a shot for every ripped off element. everyone would be too drunk by the end to even notice the gladiator ending.half the budget for set design seems to have been blown on one spiky death machine. One can deduce that from the three shots it's unnecessarily placed in, and also the fact that 90% of the movie takes place in tents. The acting is horrible, The handful of real actors in it appear to not take their rolls seriously (and for good reason) and deliver "non-performances". The editing was amateurish at best, shots were carried too long and dialog scenes were sloppy. I've seen better editing in YouTube videos. The soundtrack was generic, ambient, crap. Overall this movie had no redeeming features whatsoever. there was no single component piece to it that was even passable. whoever told "Alejo Mo-Sun" (writer/director/producer) that he has an ounce of talent in film making should be shot. His mother should be sued for encouraging him to follow his dreams.

People are comparing this to some big $50 million dollar studio films which it is simply not. It had an extremely small budget, but looks absolutely nothing like a low-budget movie. The fact that it's confusing people into thinking it was a studio movie is technically a really good thing.Think about it, the cinematography, the quality of the film it was shot on, the posters, the CGI, the sound effects and the score, everything about the movie is able to compete with big budget studio movies-that's impressive. Some of the actors aren't the best and the story isn't groundbreaking, but that's not unusual for indie movies especially when there are hundreds of movies with an entire cast of terrible actors (Hirokin had Wes Bentley as the lead) much worse than in Hirokin. It even has some surprising side-characters. The two stoner-buddy smugglers are extremely funny.When you think about it like this, Hirokin is an achievement. An independent sci-fi action film is unheard of and extremely ambitious these days. Most indie movies involve characters sitting in an apartment or storefront and talking about hyper-specific culturally sensitive idiosyncratic topics and ideas for extremely niche audiences while Hirokin has SFX, an orchestral score, and looks like it was shot on another planet. Also Hirokin can travel internationally just fine.Hirokin is not a 'studio blunder' like John Carter-it is a new breed of indie film that is able to confuse you into thinking it was a studio level movie.

WOW, lucky I watched the film before I read that last dudes review (must have it in for filmmaker?)Anyway, saw the film in high def last week and the landscape shots were breathtaking, I liked the storyline and that machine where you are chained and need to fight to save your loved one is absolutely awesome. I know the film is a Indy low budget but didn't have that feel to it, kinda hovered on the cusp. Would love to see it re done by James Cameron or Spielberg(lol). Back to the review, the bumbling idiots were great in there roles and made me laugh, the connection between the hero and heroine was great (great job by the heroine), the tension between the hero and villain was less than exciting and the rest of the cast was believable and did a good job. The action (fight)scenes looked cool especially with the funky looking bad dudes. Oh did I mention that Jessica Szohr is also in it and looks really............you know.