Sanshiro Sugata (Susumu Fujita) is a young man who yearns to learn the world of judo. He quickly becomes a pupil of the great Shogoro Yano (Denjiro Okochi). During his times under Yano’s tutelage he learns not only the true meaning of the martial arts, but also of life.

This is really odd movie to watch. In 2010 I began the year by watching a number of Akira Kurosawa’s films, most of them considered his best work, and now at the beginning of this year I’m greeted with his first ever movie.

This movie doesn’t stand out as his best at all. It seems like a well constructed thematic story about a young man who learns that life is more than he thinks it is, but somehow it lacks the subtlety that most of his later efforts possesses.

The film is what, for the time, is considered an action film. We have the film culminating with the massive fight between Hansuke Murai (Takashi Shimura) where Sugata has to find the reason to fight since he’s torn between wanting to prove his dominance, show his respect to his master, not hurt this man that has such a beautiful daughter and whether fighting is actually the right thing to do. It’s really Rocky without the montages and theme music.

I think my biggest disappointment with this movie is the opening of it where I’m given a text explanation that the movie I’m about to watch is the Japanese Government Edited version of Kurosawa’s film and that they couldn’t get the cut footage to be added to the release. I’m almost certain that the near two and a half hour cut that Kurosawa originally meant to be released. This under ninety-minute cut of the film was rereleased for our enjoyment without consulting the director, so even though it does serve as a historical entry into cinema I was hoping to see a lot of what Kurosawa intended to convey, because even though this movie is perfectly adequate I didn’t feel like it was much more than that.

I just felt that there was a great movie in here, but due to edits it was lost. I didn’t feel that the film earned the final fight between Sugata and Higaki (Ryunosuke Tsukigata) but was rather just building up to it for the sequel that I know exists.

IMDB says 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes says N/A

I say 5.0/10