I was leafing through Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies and came across a practically tossed-off, single sentence description of Time Slip (aka G.I. Samurai): a modern-day Japanese army unit is transported to 16th century Japan where they face off against armies of deadly samurai. Well, suffice it to say, I needed to see this immediately!
Thanks to director Kosei Saito's full embrace of this sci-fi, comic book-style premise, G.I. Samurai delivers the goods, including a mind-blowing THIRTY MINUTE (!) battle sequence. If there's one major flaw, it's that the film wants to be an epic on par with something like Seven Samurai, focusing on multiple characters to make for a richer tale, but this bogs down the pacing and makes for a bloated runtime. Still, it's quite an achievement, with an ending that immediately reminded me of Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence.
And Sonny Chiba hanging from a helicopter while firing a machine gun? Yes, please!
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