Melodrama doesn't come more butch than this, and the performances reflect that intensity, although Aaron Sorkin's moral predicaments are given full scrutiny.
Kurosawa uses Shakespeare's King Lear as a template, but in Ran Lear's three scheming daughters are sons, and the action is transposed to a mythic, dreamlike, feudal Japan. Like an adrenalized fever dream of ultimate power gone awry, Ran reveals Kurosawa's grasp of visual splendor at its most powerful.