Shugo Hayami (Kentaro Sakaguchi) is asked by his colleague to go on duty at a relatively small nursing hospital. At the same time, a robber in a clown mask robs a nearby convenience store. The robber makes their way to the hospital, where they hold Hayami and the other medical staff hostage. But there is more than meets the eye for the robber, Hayami, and the staff of the hospital than is readily apparent...
The main draw of Hisashi Kimura's Masked Ward is its pulpy, twisty mystery. It helps if you go into this movie blind, trying to solve all the mysteries within. Kimura is better known for his television work, and he manages to use some of the things he learned in his crime and mystery drama work in this film.
Masked Ward is not particularly weighty, but it's a good time as long as you don't take it too seriously. Veterans of the mystery genre will no doubt find some elements of the film predictable, but getting to the solution is just as fun as the solution itself.
I'm not exactly the biggest Japanese history nerd, but a lifetime playing games like Samurai Warriors lets one learn things through osmosis. The Siege of Oshi is one particular battle during the Warring States period that seems more like historical fantasy than historical fact. In that siege, a force of 20,000 men led by Mitsunari Ishida tried to get a castle with a complement of 500 to surrender to Ishida's lord, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Hideyoshi was a cunning tactician and former retainer of Nobunaga Oda, one of Japan's most well known historical figures. In contrast, Mitsunari wasn't the best of military commanders, and - spoiler alert - the Siege of Oshi becomes one of his most notable failures.
Sounds interesting, right? One could frame this as 300 but in Japan and non Japanese audiences would be none the wiser. However, The Floating Castle is a weird film. As a blockbuster action spectacle, it loses steam midway through and sputters to a lackluster end. As a historical film, The Floating Castle is heavily fictionalized, and it does some of its characters dirty; Kaihime, arguably one of the most badass historical figures in The Floating Castle, is relegated to a damsel in distress type who does very little in the siege proper, whereas in historical records she played a large part in successfully defending the castle from invaders.
Aside from a fun sequence in the middle of the film (arguably the only battle sequence worth watching), it's not a very satisfying watch - unless you like the bumbling buffoon the film places as its central protagonist.
