Review: There are certain movies that frequently play on American television that I never pass up no matter how many times I've seen them and The Final Countdown (1980) is one of them. It stars Kirk Douglas as the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz who finds himself, his crew and a ship full of the Navy's most sophisticated military hardware (circa 1980) thrust back into time to 1941, right before Japan declares war on the United States and turns a European war into the Second World War. It's a fascinating "what if" for history and science fiction buffs alike that is not only entertaining, but raises fascinating moral, philosophical, and theoretical questions as the crew must wrestle with the desire to use their technological superiority to change history. Nearly the same could be said of G.I. Samurai, a Japanese collaboration between action film master Sonny Chiba and Kadokawa Films with a similar premise, but with an even wider and more intriguing technological gap where samurai warriors battle soldiers with modern weaponry.

An unexplained time slip transports a small group of SDF soldiers, led by Chiba, 400 years into Japan's past where they find themselves in the middle of a war between rival samurai clans. With them comes a tank, jeep, halftrack, patrol boat, transport helicopter, crews to man them, and ample fuel and ammunition. Unafraid of these strangers with their advanced weaponry, samurai warlord Kagatori is quick to befriend them, especially Chiba whom he sees as an equal in fighting spirit. The soldiers struggle, some more so than others, to come to grips with their predicament which soon proves to be quite deadly despite their advanced equipment. When several rogue soldiers run off with the boat to rape and pillage their way along the coast, Chiba leads his team against them. Then in a desperate bid to upset history and force the powers that be to return them to their own time, Chiba and his remaining soldiers join forces with Kagatori to take on his enemy in an epic battle between men and machinery.

G.I. Samurai is an interesting time travel piece in that it's less about hypothesizing about the desire to change or exploit history, the predominate themes of most Western time travel stories, and more about the devolution of man when cut off from modern social restrictions. As such, it's a bleak tale that says little for military discipline and not surprisingly failed to garner the support of Japan's military. Yet even with a downer ending and confused anti-war and pro-Bushido themes, G.I. Samurai never sinks too far below being pure, speculative pulp entertainment that offers irresistible combat scenarios.

There are a number small, early skirmishes between modern and ancient warriors that act as teasers for the main event, a massive battle where Chiba and his few, but heavily-armed and mobile companions take on an entire army of samurai and spearmen. The scene is spectacularly played out as hundreds of samurai employ advanced tactics and superior numbers to battle Chiba's increasingly desperate crew. It gets worse for them when ninjas emerge from the battlefield with even more tricks.

As a born warrior, Chiba's character ably adapts to 16th-century warfare and is soon firing a bow on horseback, fending off attackers with a spear and dueling with a samurai warlord. Like the full-scale battle, these and other action scenes, such as when Kagatori assassinates a fellow warlord in the man's own castle and makes his escape by helicopter, are finely executed and thrilling indulgences of fantasy.

It's not every day that one gets the chance to see a tank blasting its way through spear-wielding footmen. If for no other reason, G.I. Samurai is worth seeing simply to witness the carnage when modern weaponry wielded by a few distraught soldiers are thrown at a determined army of samurai. Though small in comparison, reasons to think twice about the movie include too many musical montages with '70s soft rock tunes and a lack of support from the military which means the hardware and tactics on display are not as authentic or impressive by post-World War II Japanese standards as they could have been. But in general, this is one of Sonny Chiba's more enjoyable and creative works that should appeal to a broader audience than his typical exploitation films do.