DVD box text WTF?

The last couple of movies I've gotten from Netflix, the story summary has been... off.

I guess Chushingura wasn't terribly bad. The back-of-box text is:
"At the dawn of the 18th century, honorable Lord Naganori Asano (Yuzo Kayama) refuses to buy off a crooked official (Chûsha Ichikawa) and subsequently gets tricked into performing ritual suicide. Asano's masterless and displaced followers suffer humiliation and poverty while waiting for the chance to prove their loyalty by avenging their leader's death. This tense, deliberately paced drama is based on a venerable Japanese legend."

That's not really how it came across to me. Instead of "honorable lord refusing to buy off crooked official", it seems more like "well intentioned but inexperienced lord botches expected social niceties and incompetent shogun allows things to get completely out of control."
1) To me, it doesn't seem like bribery if someone gives you a gift worth 200 ryou and expects you to return the favor with... a gift worth 200 ryou. That just seems like the exchange of gifts between business/political associates that's common in some cultures, and the problem here is that Asano's list of customary amounts is about 50 years out of date.
2) Asano's not so much tricked into committing seppuku, as he lost his temper and drew his sword in the Shogun's palace, which the Shogun didn't much appreciate and which was well-known to be a stupid thing to do. Oishi wasn't trying to get Asano to pull his sword. Actually, it surprised the living crap out of him that Asano really did it.
3) Tragedy coming about because of a central leader's incompetence is definitely a major aspect of the film. The only time we see the Shogun, he's complaining that the guy who was just attacked and is bleeding from multiple sword wounds got blood on the Shogun's good kimono. We actually see the Shogun's dog longer than we see the Shogun, in a scene were the dog is being carried through the town in a palanquin while peasants are made to bow down to it. The Shogun refuses to hear Asano's reason for drawing his sword, which would have placated the underlings. Instead he destroys the Asano clan, while sending Oishi home without so much as a "shame on you". Every bit of the story was avoidable with decent leadership.

Oh, and "deliberately paced" is code for "there's really only 90 minutes of story, but it drags out for 3 and a half hours." Gosh, the movie must spend at least 20 minutes just replacing tatami mats -- and believe me, I wish I was kidding.

Still, I can at least see where the back of box text came from, even if I really disagree with it.

This time, though. I got Furin Kazan, released in the US as "Samurai Banners", and it's box blurb is:
"Yamamoto Kansuke (Mifune Toshiro), a Bushido fighter, has risen through the ranks through dishonorable means, a fact that his warlord knows nothing about. To Takeda (Kinnosuke Naka), Yamamoto is the consummate leader, a man beyond reproach. But when they both fall for Princess Yufu (Yoshiko Sakuma), Yamamoto is forced to compete with Takeda, who soon discovers what his once-loyal disciple is all about."

Did we watch the same movie? Um, no. Not at all. Kansuke, a ronin, gets hired on due to a dirty trick, but after that he rises through the ranks because he's a brilliant strategist. Granted, he starts as a sneaky bastard, but everyone knows he's a sneaky bastard. He gets called on it by an enemy about 45 minutes in and then he can't be a sneaky bastard anymore because no one's falling for it. As for the "forced to compete" bit, Yu's been dead 7 years by then and the competition come about because Yamamoto's spent the last 15-ish years leading the campaign to take over half of Japan and has the final battle all planned out so victory is just about guaranteed and then Takeda's goes all "oh, I decided I wanted to plan a battle, so I just moved the army." Oh, and if Takeda really didn't realize that Kansuke had a special devotion to Yu until the end of the movie, he's too stupid to rule anyway.

The movie is really more about ambition. I think it's summed up by the repeated line "What you want is something immense, that's out of your grasp. What I want is right in front of my eyes." Kansuke dreamed great big, and so did great big, and ultimately screwed up great big.
This one's a good movie, though, worth the 166 minute run time.