Trailer - Shun Oguri's Tajomaru

Here’s the full trailer for Hiroyuki Nakano’s “Tajomaru”, a new film based on the 1922 short story “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, which recounted a single event from 7 different perspectives after the fact. Akira Kurosawa‘s award-winning 1950 film Rashomon was also based on In a Grove, but this version changes things up by focusing on the bandit character Tajomaru and giving him a whole new back-story. Yeah, it’s a pretty bizarre idea, but at the risk of being forced to turn in my Japanese cinema fan card, I don’t really get what the big deal is with Rashomon anyway.

Plot: Naomitsu (Shun Oguri) is the second son of the Hatakeyama family and fiance of Princess Ako (Yuki Shibamoto). When he gets chased away from his home as the result of a conspiracy against him, Naomitsu flees into the mountains with Ako in tow, but they’re soon attacked by a bandit named Tajomaru (Hiroki Matsukata). After managing to kill Tajomaru, Naomitsu takes the bandit’s identity as his own.

Tajomaru will be released in Japan this September.

official website.