Customer Reviews

Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This film stands along side Seven Samurai and Ikiru as a truly magnificent production. I own it on vhs and purchased the Dvd with delight only to be shocked by the extremely poor digital video and audio transfer. Many shots are multiple imaged and clipped. The dialogue is bearly understandable. Finally, as a person who speaks and reads Japanese fluently I must tell you the translation subtitling is very, very poor. Frankly, save your money.

My star rating is for the film itself, which is very good early Kurosawa. HOWEVER, I own the Mei Ah Hong Kong disc, which is completely unwatchable due to a bad pressing. I have had problems with other DVDs from this company, so I will wait to see what others say before buying it myself. Hopefully, Mei Ah has corrected the problem for this release.

I viewed a version of this film on cable and was so moved by the strong acting and poetic dialogue (as related in the sub-titles--I am not a Japanese speaker) that I ordered this copy, not realizing that there is more than one version available in my market (USA).

The video transfer quality in this Mei Ah Entertainment release is very bad, especially when the camera was panning quickly (which doesn't happen too often in this deliberately slow-paced story). As distracting as the video quality is, the big disappointment is with the English translation sub-titles. The Japanese names have largely been translated into Chinese names. The real problem however, is that the dialogue was apparently first translated into Chinese and then into English. The resultant gibberish is mostly incomprehensible. Had I not seen the earlier version, I would have had little idea of what was going on.

There is a much better English sub-titled version out there, but it is definitely not this one. I think most general viewers will be in for a big disappointment with the Mei Ah version. My single-star rating is solely for the poor quality of the translation and video transfer.

I watched Kurosawa's They Who Step on Tiger's Tail yesterday and am here today to order a copy. Everything about it was excellent. It was made right after WWII and had a meager budget (it looks like it could have been shot in a patch of woods behind the studio), but that only adds to its charm. The actors more than rise to the task; the actor who played Benkei is inspirational. Two thumbs up!