Shogun (1980)

“Listen to me, you whore-gutted, pock-marked, motherless scum… I need a favor. “- Vasco Rodrigues

Number of Times Seen – 1 (24-25 Mar 2015)

Brief Synopsis – The captain and crew of a ship trying to circumnavigate the world, end up in Japan and being stranded there need to find a way to survive despite vast cultural differences between the people of the West and the East.

My Take on it – This is a movie that I’ve been interested in seeing for quite a long time, but the daunting length kept me away.

I now can understand how movies like this one and Roots (1977) helped pave the way for network Tv to understand the importance of the miniseries.

By not being limited to a two hour tv movie, they could be much more faithful to the source material by presenting us with a ten hour movie.

I’ve never really seen much of Richard Chamberlain’s work, but he is great here as a man torn betwen two cultures.

I loved how they kept everyone speaking their own language and rarely used subtitles or narration as a crutch for us to understand.

We understand what the characters do and this raises the suspense in scenes where neither we nor the ‘Western’ characters fully understand all that is happening around them.

Bottom Line – Epic miniseries that helped pave the way for even more long and engaging limited series on network Tv. Chamberlain is great and I enjoyed the fact that we pretty much only understand what the ‘western’ characters understand. Subtitles and narration are minimal. Highly recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – According to the DVD documentary “The Making of Shogun”, Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Albert Finney were all considered for the role of Blackthorne. Connery was James Clavell’s choice for the role, but turned it down. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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