I’d like to talk about how much I enjoyed Owls’ Castle. I really would. But I can’t. Well, it’s not that bad a film. But it could have been better. And it certainly could have been more tightly edited (my DVD copy is 2 hours and 18 minutes).

Owls’ Castle contains all the elements of a good film. It’s good good actors, great photography, some action, some human drama, a decent budget. But the movement of the plot is too slow for my tastes: too many longing looks, too much mood-setting. The individual parts, as a matter of fact, work great: the fight scenes are exciting; the storyline takes all the right turns; everything looks great. But when edited together, somehow, things just seem to have been stretched out too long: too many scenes between scenes, digressions, subplots within subplots.

The plot concerns the efforts of ninja Juzo to take revenge on the current shogun. Ten years previous, Oda Nobunaga decided to wipe out the large enclave of ninja living in the Iga district (gosh, I hope I remembered that part correctly) – not just the men but the women and children as well. Now, one of the brightest of the surviving young pupils has made his way to the shogun’s castle as preparations are being made to invade Korea. There are other factions involved – the usual political enemies but also ruthless merchants who wish to prevent the upcoming war from upsetting their trade with the mainland. Plenty of action ensues.

I was fighting a cold while watching this movie the first time, so I’ll use that to excuse my dim memories of the plot. But looking at it again for this review, I remembered how stately the thing moved forward, and how damned long it was.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad film at all. Some sequences are quite exciting and memorable. I think the creators were trying to create a modern epic, and in at least the technical aspects, this qualifies. But it just doesn’t hold my interest the way I think it could have if it had been better edited.