Haruki Kadokawa's epic nod (in both senses) to 16th-century samurai warrior life offers a lot of sound and fury and not much else. Takaaki Enoki stars as Kagetora, who seeks to conquer his neighbors for political purposes (making him the good guy), while Takeda (Masahiko Tsugawa) is bent on subjugating his neighbors for personal power (so he's the bad guy). Stuart Whitman provides English voice-over narration which sounds very much like a blow-by-blow description of a strategy-based board game. The two armies clash on a whole score of plains while the characters occasionally offer such dialogue gems as "war is your destiny," or "my ambitions have no limits." Heaven & Earth's only claim to one's attention is the pure size and vibrant color of its battle scenes. Huge formations of men on horseback thunder towards one another with swords swinging in all directions. But during these blood spilling tete a tetes, the main characters say such distinctly unstirring things as "change to the Crane formation," and "assume the Rolling Wheel formation." In the climactic final battle, during which the combatants lunge at one another with super long pikes, all I could think was that somebody was gonna get poked in the eye. Battle scenes do not a movie make, and Heaven & Earth, which sports some of the thinnest character development this side of Twiggy, is not what most people would call a movie. Fans of big spectacle Japanese war movies should check out Ran or other Kurosawa films instead. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)
Heaven & Earth
color. 104 min. In Japanese w/English subtitles. LIVE Home Video. (1991). $79.98. Rated: PG-13 Library Journal
Heaven & Earth
Star Ratings
As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
Order From Your Favorite Distributor Today: