Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980) is an epic historical war drama set during Japans Sengoku era. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, the film follows a thief recruited to impersonate the dying warlord Takeda Shingen in order to preserve political stability and military power. The film won the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival and became one of Akira Kurosawas most internationally celebrated late-period works. Combining large-scale battle sequences with political and psychological themes, the film remains a landmark of Japanese historical cinema.

Criterion Collection

When a warlord dies, a peasant thief is called upon to impersonate him, and then finds himself haunted by the warlords spirit as well as his own ambitions. In his late color masterpiece Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa returns to the samurai film and to a primary theme of his career the play between illusion and reality. Sumptuously reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a historical epic that is also a meditation on the nature of power.

Från IMDB:
A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lords double. When the warlord later dies the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

Restored high-definition digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 soundtrack

Audio commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince

Lucas, Coppola, and Kurosawa, an interview piece from 2005 in which directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola discuss Kurosawa and Kagemusha

Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film

Image: Kurosawas Continuity, a piece from 1993 reconstructing Kagemusha through Kurosawas paintings and sketches

Suntory Whisky commercials made on the set of Kagemusha

Gallery of storyboards painted by Ku