Shogun Details

As you battle through this tedious adaptation of James Clavell's blockbuster novel, be thankful you have been spared the marathon that was the original miniseries. That enough material for another three features has gone Awol should alert you to the fact that what remains is so packed with unexplained characters and implausible events that it is virtually impossible to decipher what's going on. Unaware that most of his performance was destined for the cutting-room floor, but only too aware that Toshiro Mifune is acting him off the screen, Richard Chamberlain is wildly OTT as the English sailor washed up in 17th-century Japan.