Kagemusha (Criterion Collection)

In his late color masterpiece "Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior)," director Akira Kurosawa returned to the samurai film and to a primary theme of his celebrated career-the play between illusion and reality. Sumptuously reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a soaring historical epic that is also a somber meditation on the nature of power.