Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

overdarklord The third and final part of "The Human Condition" series is the most brutal, breathtaking and deeply disturbing movie of the three. All the beating you saw in the second part cant even come close to how physically, but especially psychologically brutal and disturbing this movie can be. This movie ultimatly playes with the idea that no matter how much of a good person you are, which in the case of our main protagonist, Kaji was shown throughout the last 2 movies, you will always been judged by steriotypes and clichee rather than on your actions and what you have been going through. Is it right to torture and treat people the same way they treated others, even if they have been forced by the military and the zeitgeist of the moment? Is it morally justifiable? This is something everyone has to answer for themself, this movie just shows you this idea in an objective manner not really taking any sides.With watching this series Masaki Kobayashi, finally made the case for him being the best japanese director of the last century in my opinion. And it also made the case for Tatsuya Nakadai being the best actor of the last century. The emotions this man can convey with this performance by far surpass anything I have seen from any other japanese actor of the last century. The character development Kaji endured throughout the series but especially through this final part was written perfectly and absolutely believably portrayed.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Parts III & IV. Viewed on DVD and Streaming. Film = barely five (5) stars; restoration = ten (10) stars; cinematography = nine (9) stars; score = three (3) stars. Director Masaki Kobayashi's Parts III and IV of the overly-contrived adventures of a fish-out-of-water protagonist. This time out, Kobayashi pits a college Communist against the Japanese Army in Manchuria! A masochistic photo play that seems bent on driving home the message that war is hell, but the brutality of gang wars in army barracks is just as bad (or even worse!). It is painfully (no pun) obvious that the Director is trying to squeeze as many vignettes from the source material (a massive contemporary novel) as his production budget will allow into the movie, since one micro dramatic event randomly follows another (usually bridged with fade outs). The result is that Part III is way too long and just plain boring. Part III is also crammed with repetitious bouts of face slapping and beatings (mostly in the barracks) which seems to comprise the major part of training for new recruits. (A lot of the heavy-duty face slapping looks to be real--and stunt actors do not appear to have been used!) Part IV (also loaded with face slapping) is less than exciting until the Soviets declare war and launch an impressive tank attack against a pitifully trained and under equipped Japanese Army (the Japanese are shown to lack war machinery, machine guns, automatic rifles, and even ammunition--but they do have shovels and know how to slap faces!). Once again, Kobayashi fills the screen with many hard-to-swallow oddities beyond the usual David and Goliath plot. My favorites include: the many face-slapping riffs on classic Three Stooges' shorts including slapping Army nurses; frequent dialog references to "The Front" which is never defined and begin way before the Soviet declaration of war and their invasion; near drowning in a puddle-sized "lake"; the extraordinary power of ancient Confucian principles (of absolute obedience to higher authority) to prevent well-deserved mutinies (perhaps not a real oddity?); and the ludicrous power of romantic love which causes a bride to leave college in Tokyo, move to a Manchurian pit mine, and STAY THERE after her husband has been drafted! Acting is perfunctory and often melodramatic, since the majority of lines are delivered by shouting (which quickly becomes tedious). Characters are often hard to differentiate except in close-ups (which seem under used), as they are costumed and made-up to look pretty much indistinguishable in medium and long shots. Cinematography (wide screen, black and white) and scene lighting are excellent. Restoration is excellent. Subtitles/translations are OK. Aside from the opening credits, the score seems to have been recycled from the initial film and is injected when least appropriate. A scene distraction rather than an enhancer. Not particularly recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.Parts V & VI. Viewed on DVD and Streaming. Film = three (3) stars; restoration = ten (10) stars; cinematography = nine (9) stars; sound (remastered) = six (6) stars; score = three (3) stars. Director Masaki Kobayashi's Parts V and VI of an overly-contrived (and overly long) WW II epoch fail to reverse the spiral of increasing tediousness engendered with each succeeding installment. In these last two, the male protagonist leads (sort of) a ragtag assortment of army and civilian survivors wandering around the landscape (or around a remote Soviet POW camp) and going nowhere in post-war Manchuria. Seems fitting for a film that essentially goes nowhere (and is very, very slow in getting there!). Elements repetitiously sprinkled into the overall scenario include: the impact of imminent starvation; groups of Japanese circumstantial comfort women (who lost their husbands during the war); Japanese bandits (remnants of the Army); well-armed Chinese farmers out for revenge; and Soviet Army units rounding up Japanese men for post-war POW slave-labor camps. Part V is grossly padded with events/happenings the ragtag group encounters as it trudges about. And seems to end only when most/all of the elements from the original source material (a six-volume novel) have been covered. In addition, it includes many flashbacks using scenes from previous episodes to break the monotony and help with the padding. Part VI also contains a fair amount of wandering-around padding (especially at the end) and is loaded (likely do to the original source material) with increasingly irritating voice-over homilies/mini-gospels) about the politics of life and romantic love (the voice of the protagonist's wife keeps popping up on the sound tract with the same verbiage). Russian line readings by non-Japanese sound like Russian (or pseudo Russian) is being spoken. The amusing phonetically spoken Mandarin by Japanese actors is reduce to just a few lines this time (but there is some "interesting" phonetically spoken Russian). Kobayashi again fills the screen with many hard-to-swallow oddities beyond the usual David and Goliath plot (this time it's a tale about a text-book Communist taking on the management of a Soviet POW camp). Among my favorite oddities: Japanese troops abandoned and cut off from outside communications still manage to be well informed about current WW II events in Europe and the Pacific; the total absence of comfort women portrayed as sex slaves; no one has a compass; hacking through "jungle vegetation" so anemic that using a Swiss Army knife would be overkill; and Soviet soldiers singing in perfect multi-part harmony. Cinematography (wide screen, black and white) and scene lighting are excellent. Restoration is excellent. Subtitles can be overly long and flash by too quickly (which is why there are rewind and pause buttons on your remote). Some Russian dialog (including singing) is not translated. Same for several signs/banners. Aside from the excellent opening credits music, the score acts like a hammer and treats scenes as if they are all nails (music editing misalignment is the norm)! Sound has been remastered to provide some surround-like effects which is not all that successful (especially for characters speaking from the sides of or off the screen. Not recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN

OttoVonB And the epic saga continues….Read this only after the reviews for parts one and two. There won't be any spoilers but the review will make more sense.Having survived the near-total extermination of his unit at the end of Part II, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) wanders through war-torn China with a group of hopeless survivors. Everyone they encounter deals with defeat and despair in their own way.It all comes to an end with style, though that style is bleaker and more episodic than either of the previous chapters. The great tragedy of Kaji's life is that the closest he comes to being free of the horrors of war, the further he is – geographically speaking – from the only thing he truly wants: reunion with his loving wife. This detail gives the film, in many ways your standard squad war film, an important extra dimension it would never have had as a stand-alone piece. After about 10 hours in 3 films, Kobayashi has given us a POW drama, a character study about duty VS dignity, a war film that crushed Full Metal Jacket, a roaming war-set nightmare that rivals Apocalypse Now, all wrapped up in an uncompromisingly humanist masterpiece. You will feel exhausted by the end of this, physically – 10 hours of straight cinema-scope horrors takes a toll on the eyes – and mentally. But it is undoubtedly one of the mind-expanding works of film, and one of the greatest tragedies ever put to the screen.If you'd ever wondered, now you know what cinema's answer to Hamlet looks like.

ibts12 i had listened a lot about this movie but was unlucky that i had not seen this. This is a fascinating movie and i think that i am still feeling effect of the movie on my personality. I never imagined that even a movie can effect someone so much,and also there is feeling that what should be an excellent human condition ( as shown by Kaji and his wife) and what is prevailing human condition as we see around us. I have deep regards for all the crew of the movie who provided us a worth seeing and personality effecting movie. I dedicate all I have learned to the director of movie Masaki Kobayashi.I have given the movie 10/10 because i find no point to deduct even a single mark. I recommend all serious movie viewers to kindly must see this movie and try to learn from it.