Movie Review - Binary Samurai

 

Binary Samurai

Watch it for free onTubi

Or pay to watch it on Amazon Prime

Over on YouTube you can watch the trailer for this one. It was put up by the guy responsible for the film. Wonder why he has the comments turned off?

Made in 2023 set in the dark future of 1999. Yeah the opening explanation of what’s going on really doesn’t fill in any of the blanks either. But okay here we go with something new. I’ll call is ‘Shiver Cam’. It’s like who ever is holding the camera, or the rig, is shaking and the whole thing has a slight bounce up and down. But somehow they are even managing to make the opening credits shiver as well. That’s not a positive way to start.

The movie proceeds to go straight down pretty quick. It’s a dystopian apocalyptic future but everybody seems to have some pretty clean clothes and they are hunting down abandoned object laying the dirt for years that are also perfectly clean. Amazing that. The costumes, man the costumes. I’ve seen much better cyberfuture/apocalyptic outfits at small game cons than this. Feels like this is what they filmed while they were doing the photo shots for the Digital Burn ttrpg. Don’t know what Digital Burn is? There’s a reason for that.

Props. Yeah they got some props. All secured from the bins at thrift stores and airsoft ranges. I actually recognized one airsoft pistol in particular that I used to own many long years ago. They just glued something extra on top of it. Coupled with special effect done with your instant special effects generator that you can pick up anywhere online. But hey, they at least use it to it’s full measure. I’ll give them that one. But one thing, one of the Samurai’s carries around a cyberdeck… that’s built on the deck of a skateboard. Guess they were trying to be clever.

Boy they love these abandoned buildings. Actually I think it’s just one big ass abandoned building, they just used every single damn inch of it.

Now let’s talk about their whole ‘cyberspace’ thing. HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT AM I WATCHING? It is, no I’m not shitting you, interpretive dance. ALL OF IT. The actors in a blue light dancing in a dark area with ones and zeros line up down the screen for the ‘cyber’ effect. They spend half that damned movie on this absolute trash. It goes on for several minutes at a time with little to no dialogue. Just dancing and some old Japanese type of music. I mean kudos for coming up with a new idea here, but it’s a fucking really shit idea. It’s worse than the action figure art of the 3^rd edition of the Cyberpunk ttrpg. I can't even begin to explain how absolutely dumb this looks. 

Now on with the overall feeling of the film. Is this supposed to be serious, or this badly done on purpose? I had to get up and walk away several times while watching this one. I NEVER have to do that. Zardoz is better than this. So many parts are painfully boring. Long glances and people just looking at things for ever. If they cut out all the nothing scenes and all the GOD AWFUL INTERPRETIVE DANCING this thing would only be about ten to fifteen minutes long.

I didn’t like interpretive dancing before, now I absolutely hate it. Not even going to talk about the AI generated cover image they use for this thing.

Plot? Oh yeah that's in there. Samurai guys stealing 'nodes' from tech worshippers and giving them to the Daimyo they serve. Other person in the net telling them "no don't do that". There you have it. 

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