Phil Hubbs Space samurai on a distant planet says you? yes please says I. The villain played by the dastardly devilish looking Julian Sands?? oh my! this sounds great! Wes Bentley says you? hmm OK not bad, not bad, but I've gone slightly soft now.Plus points...the film looks pretty sweet, its basic with obvious sets and errr...a handful of bad guys, villagers and good guys used over and over but the location work looks nice. Set on the distant desert planet of Aradius you can see straight away certain similarities to many other sci-fi/fantasy films, need I list them? So everything looks very familiar yet admittedly rather nice with use of sunsets, twilight, dusk, early morning etc...the colours and hues are gorgeous at times.Apart from that the film is your standard by the numbers chosen one styled plot line. A lone warrior saves a small tribe of people (aliens that look exactly like humans) from a tyrant human played by Sands naturally. All the bad guys look like Imperial guards from 'ROTJ' and Sands looks suspiciously like Sting in 'Dune'.Its all very clichéd and run of the mill stuff, yet the whole point is lost on me, I have no real clue what's in it for the evil Julian Sands to do what he does. Angus Macfadyen is the Yoda-like Master, the all powerful leader, warrior and rebel who must train the eager Hirokin, cue lots of training montages set against facial close ups and with many shadows and silhouettes.There seems to be a lot more style over substance really, very arty and nice to look at but behind that its pretty crappy stuff really. Doesn't really make much sense, why would a distant planet in the future (or so I assume) utilize the ancient Japanese samurai way of life, war and culture? where do they get their fuel, water and food from? etc...I could go on but I won't.Shame the people/aliens of this poor village seem to totally outnumber the bad guys (but why would they even stay in this village?, the area offers nothing...leeeeave it!!). Oh and this alien race are called Arids. You see what they have done there? Arids...Arabs? or maybe because the planet they live on is arid?...ah beats the sh*t outta me.Its a nice slice of B-movie sci-fi hokum that will please some fans of the genre. Its fun harmless stuff and Bentley does look the part I admit. May I suggest a better choice, if you like sci-fi hokum then I recommend 'Hunter Prey' which is a much better ride.4/10

zorrek Badly directed with even worse editing this story had a lot of potential. Fails miserably as entertainment, screen play and dialogue are even worse than the directing and editing. Production quality is almost there and the acting looks like it was all first takes with little rehearsal. I also saw bits from other movies, Gladiator, Star Wars a little of Dune. Plenty of good looking sorts in it, but even they can't save this festering mess. It would not have taken too much to have turned this into blockbuster, get Joss Weadon in to rewrite the screenplay and direct. Pay the actors a little more and give them some time to rehears.

ian-richard-jones People are comparing this to some big $50 million dollar studio films which it is simply not. It had an extremely small budget, but looks absolutely nothing like a low-budget movie. The fact that it's confusing people into thinking it was a studio movie is technically a really good thing.Think about it, the cinematography, the quality of the film it was shot on, the posters, the CGI, the sound effects and the score, everything about the movie is able to compete with big budget studio movies-that's impressive. Some of the actors aren't the best and the story isn't groundbreaking, but that's not unusual for indie movies especially when there are hundreds of movies with an entire cast of terrible actors (Hirokin had Wes Bentley as the lead) much worse than in Hirokin. It even has some surprising side-characters. The two stoner-buddy smugglers are extremely funny.When you think about it like this, Hirokin is an achievement. An independent sci-fi action film is unheard of and extremely ambitious these days. Most indie movies involve characters sitting in an apartment or storefront and talking about hyper-specific culturally sensitive idiosyncratic topics and ideas for extremely niche audiences while Hirokin has SFX, an orchestral score, and looks like it was shot on another planet. Also Hirokin can travel internationally just fine.Hirokin is not a 'studio blunder' like John Carter-it is a new breed of indie film that is able to confuse you into thinking it was a studio level movie.

tredawg402 I recently saw the movie "Hirokin" and I have to say for an Indie movie it didn't feel that way. You normally associate an Indie movie with poor quality and mediocre acting as well as the feel that it was shot with a hand held video camera. This movie had great visual's as to the landscape and scenery. The story line was communicated well, Overall the film to me was an enjoyable. The characters in the film went well together, the comedic antics of the 2 hustlers in the "horde" were very entertaining. I thought that there were good performances from Angus and Julian as well as the gorgeous "Jessica Szohr". I was surprised to see these well known known actors in this indie as well as Wes Bentley. I guess if they attach themselves to a project they believe in it. The rest of the cast were good in and it helped enhance the movie. I give it to the Director for going out there to produce such a movie on an indie budget. If this had studio backing it would have those fine tuned effects and polishings to be a film.