★★★★★
Prepare your eyes to be gouged (this is a King Lear adaptation, after all). For Akira Kurosawa’s Ran has received the prestige 4K restoration treatment. This means that the red-tinted sacking of the castle of Lord Hidetora (the Lear figure, played by Tatsuya Nakadai), for instance, positively bleeds from the screen, while the yellow, red and blue colour-coding of three protagonists, Taro, Jiro and Saburo, pops out of the frame.
This is Lear at its most loosely conceived (Kurosawa even said that the Shakespeare comparisons only came after the story was established), concentrating on a ruthless elderly warlord, Hidetora, who foolishly divides his kingdom among his three avaricious sons and unleashes a violent hell-storm of revenge and retribution.
Cue the cavalry charge (200 real horses on camera — no CGI), the infantry battles (1,400 soldiers in armour – no CGI), the mutual suicides, stabbings, shootings and fiery conflagrations and the best production values that $12 million can buy — at the time Ran was the most expensive Japanese film yet made.
The ultimate message is bleak (men are rubbish and kill each other). And, no, it’s not quite Shakespeare, but whatever happens, you won’t be bored.
Akira Kurosawa, 12, 155min
In cinemas from April 1. Available to download from April 25. On DVD/Blu-ray from May 2