I recently was able to rent two movies that added to my knowledge of oriental military history. Even though I have a Mongol and a Samurai army I am far from an expert in this field as I have read a half dozen or so books only in this area. However, I was deeply impressed by both of these movies. The first movie was called Heaven and Earth. It was in Japanese with subtitles. It seemed to be a very high budget film as the samurai were very numerous and the number of horsemen incredible. It basically concerned battles between two legendary warlords in Renaissance era Japan. There was a storming of a castle and several skirmishes with excellent sword fighting. A massive battle takes place at the end with 'Pike' units, arquebusers and cavalry fighting very realistically. I would rate the 'push of the pike' even better than that in the excellent Cromwell. I must confess to enjoying Samurai movies very much. The Seven Samurai is one of my favorite movies. Of course, that is a legendary film written, directed and acted with genius. However, in my opinion, Heaven and Earth is also superb with great acting, realistic fighting and thought provoking subtitled dialogue. The other movie I saw was The Silk Road. This concerned nomad warriors in the pre-Mongol Sung Chinese era. There was a very interesting battle between Mongol Steppe type troops and Chinese type troops with catapults, crossbows and assorted weapons. A city is stormed during the movie and there is a final cavalry melee which was great. Since I am not aware of many excellent movies about Steppe troops I was delighted to have found the single copy at the video store. It is a sad commentary on American culture when I see 50 copies of goofy comedies and action movies there, but then I don't exactly see massive crowds in line to use the library or in the history section of book stores. If watching historical movies makes me different or elite that is fine! There was a time when educated people were catered to in entertainment - 100 years ago? Even the fierce Charlemagne was literate to a tremendous extent. Diatribe aside - if you have any interesting Samurai or Steppe warriors - rent these movies. Back to MWAN #63 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1993 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com