International Screener Flix: Der Samurai

Es gefällt mir.?  Okay, that's enough German for me.  There's more than enough of that in the actual Film I'm reviewing as a Screener.  Today's Film is Der Samurai, a nice little tale about a small village and a crazy person with a sword.  Good times.  In this town/village, life seems to be good.  So what happens when a crazy person starts going all psycho?  Nothing good.  For all my non-German Region-based Readers, you won't recognize any of the names in the Credits.  While that hurts the Film Marquee-wise, it does give you a blank slate to take this all in.  Good trade-off, I suppose.  As it is a Screener, I'll be very careful about SPOILERS.  To find out more about this German import that won't give you a safe and reliable ride, read on...

In a rural community, a young Cop- our Lead- is dealing with their local Wolf problem by feeding it outside of Town.

Side-note: I'm 2-for-2 on Screeners now with a Wolf playing a key role in the Story!

As the Station closes for the night, he notices a mysterious package.  He takes it home and later gets a call from a strange person asking for the box.

In the face of all the 'why would you do that?!?' you can muster, he meets up with the person that night to give them their package.

The person turns out to be a crazy transexual (or they just like to wear a dress) and the package contains a Samurai Sword!  Crap.

Without his gun (since the town is so small that they only keep one in the Station), he has to figure out a way to stop this dangerous psycho before people in town die.  Can he?

Sorry- no SPOILERS.  The End (for me).

Thanks for the oddness, Germany.  Due to a number of reasons, it took me awhile to start watching this one and get into it.  I'm glad that I gave it a chance, since it certainly does a number of things right.  The Atmosphere and Setting are nice and authentic.  The Acting is good, if never quite great.  The Story has some original notes to it and doesn't really feel derivative.  What I will say is that I didn't necessarily buy into the sub-text the Movie was representing and some of their random, arty choices didn't do too much for me.  It is another release by Artsploitation Films (at least here it is), so I'm not too surprised.  All in all, it is a good Film.  It make some interesting choices for better and interesting choices for worse, but ultimately does at least prove to be interesting.  Not to give anyone the wrong idea, but don't the leads in this Film and the last German Film I did (Tattoo) like kind of similar (plus both are Cops)?  It's not just me, right?

Next up, I'll start out the next Round of Project Terrible.  Do I go for the horrible Foreign Film first or ease into it?  Stay tuned...