Adapting a live action version of a Japanese manga is high risk/high reward. If you succeed, you could get something really fun and well like, like I Am a Hero. But in the wrong hands? You’ve got a white guy playing Goku in a Dragonball movie, not great. Much of the success goes to picking the right manga to adapt. Thankfully, Golden Kamuy director Shigeaki Kubo enlisted Satoru Noda, the creator of the manga, to help adapt his movie, assuring Golden Kamuy’s ranking much closer to I Am a Hero: not one Caucasian lead in sight!
We meet Saichi Sugimoto (Kento Yamazaki) in the heat of battle during the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s. After the war ends, Saichi settles deep in rural Hokkaido, content to live out his days quietly. A loud intrusion comes in the form of a former prisoner Takechiyo Gotō (Makita Sports), who informs “the Immortal” (Saichi’s nickname) that a leftover treasure trove of gold is hidden somewhere on Japan’s northernmost island. Saichi heads for Otaru for clues, running into Asirpa (Anna Yamada), an indigenous Ainu girl intrigued by this adventure, eventually partnering with Saichi to find and split this treasure between the two of them.
But this is no small tale. This feels BIG, with incredible mountainous shots of Hokkaido’s glorious, foreboding terrain. Every 20 minutes or so, a batch of new characters gets introduced to fill in the world, because I mean, a legend like Sierra Madre isn’t just gonna be heard by one rogue “Immortal” and his Ainu companion. There’s a secret evil prison, an indigenous village, character laden flashbacks, a rogue army battalion with a deranged leader (Hiroshi Tamaki) and a mysterious essentially Akria Kurosawa samurai (Hiroshi Tachi) and his folowers all gunning for a piece of this gold pile. At one point, there’s a chase going on the middle of Otaru, and I suddenly realized, ALL of the characters involved were not introduced in the first 15 minutes! In just over 2 hours, that’s a fantastic, efficient job of world building by Kubo and Noda, who keep finding clever ways to make each new character specific in one way, the best example being that army battalion. The 7th Division henchmen could have so easily become faceless or nameless, but the creative team uses members of that group as little mini bosses Saichi and Asirpa have to overcome before they take a seat at the final table.
That’s because character comes first in Golden Kamuy. Satoru Noda transfers the essence of his manga to the live action big screen in wonderfully specific ways. The fight/battle sequences are a little CGI’ed, but mostly excellent, getting the most out of a story where one of the combatants is “Immortal.” And yet, there’s shockingly gruesome sequences, like a horrifying bear attack, skewer torture, and entrails as battle weapon. The weird continues after the fighting: there are numerous celebrations of battle victories with a customs clash between Japanese and Ainu eating habits, that go on much longer than the 30 seconds I expected. There’s a runner about Asirpa confusing miso with feces that’s played broad and consistently funny, and on the serious side lengthy discussions of gross raw meat consumption that Patrick Bateman might have done instead of music monologuing. Each major character gets 1 battle and 1 weird character building sequence, instantly connecting them to the movie watcher, getting me to put my phone down at home and pay closer attention. I mean, it’s not everyday you have a bear gallbladder call back that actually logically fits into the story.
The biggest selling point and complaint for Golden Kamuy is that it doesn’t end, it just stops. I was worried we might end up with this being Netflix’s Horizon. But thankfully, looks like a 2nd movie is coming. Great! Bring on more characters, more standoffs, more beautiful Hokkaido, and make this live action manga adaptation one of the greats! Gallbladder for everyone!