Zatoichi’s Vengeance, the thirteenth film in the Zatoichi series, shows some serious improvements over the previous installments. I imagine that after ten or twelve movies, writers, directors & actors alike would all want to sink their teeth into something more substantial, and so it is with this film.
This is the first Z movie in which I noticed significant themes other than the series’ usual idea that leaders are corrupt and the poor townsfolk are good. In this film, Ichi is presented thematically as a force of nature. Many of the shots that feature him in a powerful position feature natural elements like streams or massive trees alongside or behind our hero. For the first time (that I’ve noticed anyway), Ichi is established as a force of nature himself. That’s extremely significant in a country where Shinto is the primary religion. Ichi is a primal force – a Shinto superhero of sorts.
The plot is similar to those of other Z films. Ichi stumbles across a dying man who, with his last words, asks that his money be delivered to his child. Since Ichi gets no other information, he’s hardly in a position to fulfill the dying man’s wish, so he goes on his way. As fate would have it, however, he stumbles upon the family in a town that is being overrun by a local yakuza boss. You can probably figure out the rest, but the Z films are never entirely about plot. They’re often about sacrifice. Ichi gives the dead man’s money to the family and is tempted to leave when he learns of the bad situation with the yakuza, but he ends up staying long enough to intervene.
The most interesting character, who appears to have been borrowed from the earliest installments of the series, is a samurai assassin who is hired to kill Ichi despite his respect for the man. Their fight on the shore of a stream is almost lyrical. Unlike many of Ichi’s fights where he strikes down countless minions with single blows, this one is against a skilled opponent and lasts for several minutes. It’s awesome when reinforced with the new thematic material.
Overall, the presentation of this installment is the best I’ve seen yet. That makes sense since I’m seeing them chronologically. Z13 was made in 1966, only four short years since Z1, but the advances made in film technology over that period are evident. Even with HVE’s crappy transfer, the images are cleaner than in any of the previous installments. Sound still suffers somewhat but it isn’t as bad as in previous DVDs that were overladen with distortion during every music cue.
Director Tozuko Tanaka, who was to go on to direct The Snow Woman among his other 48 films, shows a deft touch with this story and he keeps it moving along despite the considerable number of subplots at hand. I especially liked the suspense he builds when Ichi chooses to allow himself to be beat up instead of defending himself in front of an impressionable young boy who thinks he’s the greatest thing ever. This installment clearly deserves a nod because it elevates the pulp premise with the presentation of a prestige picture.
Z13 is highly recommended. It’s one Zatoichi film that is not to be missed.
2010′s live action version of Space Battleship Yamato does something that most reboots / remakes don’t. It shows the flaws in the original. Like many video game sequels and very few film sequels, this Yamato is a geometric progression above its humble source material. Yes, the original SBY is beloved by many anime fans, but it was a good TV series, not a good movie. This film takes that story and makes it into the movie I always wanted to see.
If you saw my review of the SBY animated film, you know that I grew up watching Star Blazers, the dubbed and recut version of the SBY series. I loved it but I found the SBY animated film wanting. Some of the later animated films were actually made for theatrical distribution, but since the original was little more than reassembled pieces of the series, I felt that it fell short. Way short. I thought that the seminal voyage of the Yamato and her gallant crew deserved better.
In 2010 I heard that the live action Yamato film was finally on its way, but I’d seen enough bad CGI in Japanese films to know that it was better to not get too excited. The first trailer that showed up on YouTube confirmed my suspicions. The captain looked somewhat frail under his fake beard and Kodai looked a little too hipsterish for his own good. Still, the sets and effects looked better than I expected. I was still reserving judgement.
Well, I finally got to see the subtitled film recently and I have to admit that my reservations were unfounded. The film, as a whole, is a resounding success. The cast and crew somehow managed to channel the emotions I felt watching Star Blazers on TV as a kid. Some of that is due to a strong score that’s punctuated by bits and pieces of the original Yamato tunes, but most of it is due to the fact that the filmmakers weren’t afraid to embrace the enthusiasm that makes all the incarnations of Yamato great.
If Hollywood had made this picture, they’d have crammed the scenes on Earth full of dark and desperate images. The crew of the Yamato would have sunk deeper and deeper into their own emotional sess pools every step of the way. The Hollywood machine would have been afraid to include the core themes that make the Yamato story unique in the world of sci fi. The joy of service, even the joy of giving one’s life for a cause, is a very Japanese idea that permeates the film. Yes, Kodai is more rebellious in this version, but I think that indicates the changes that have taken place in Japanese society over the thirty years since the original Yamato series.
I was surprised by the film’s similarity to Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, but I shouldn’t have been. The original Yamato series has served as a source of inspiration for countless properties, including Star Wars and Moore’s Galactica. The SBY series and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, from the same creative team, both present their space forces as navies, right down to the captain’s uniforms which are adorned with anchors. This is very close to Moore’s concept for the Galactica reboot, and not dissimilar to Nick Meyer’s version of Star Trek. In the new Yamato film, that inspiration has come full circle, with Galactica’s production design clearly influencing this production. Lighting, set design, cinematography and effects all show the influence of Moore’s Galactica. I should add that this isn’t a bad thing on any level and clearly reinforces the concepts of the original show.
There have been modifications to the original SBY story line, and most of them work. Unlike many “reboots” that try to one up a property than most consider to be a touchstone of cinema (like Zatoichi), this time the writers were laboring to fix a flawed masterpiece. Yes, the original story was a great one, but what made it great wasn’t its plot. It was its characters and concepts. Those have remained intact here. I wasn’t thrilled with the new ending but I have to admit that it fits into the gestalt of Yamatos past. If this had been a Hollywood picture, this ending would have never seen the light of day. It’s refreshing on that level even if it disappointed me.
I can’t recommend this film highly enough. If you’re already a fan of Yamato, it’s a no brainer. If not, I think you’ll find it a very entertaining introduction.
The Yamato TV series is near and dear to my heart. As a teenager, I would rush home to catch the American version of the series, Star Blazers, every day after school. My brother and I watched religiously, eager to see what would happen to the Yamato (Star Blazers called it the Argo) and it’s valiant crew on the way to Iscandar or battling the Comet Empire. Later, when I lived in Atlanta, I bought Japanese books on the series including a couple containing animation cels that I still have. That’s why it pains me to say that the first “movie”, Space Battleship Yamato, thoroughly sucks as a film.
Over the years, I’d avoided the first couple of Yamato films because I was told that they were basically retellings of the series I’d already seen, so this was my very first viewing. Sadly, SBY-the film, consists almost entirely of footage from the failed first season of the series. That’s right. Animation that was built to be seen in standard def 4:3 was edited, a stinky narration was slapped on, and they had the balls to call it a movie! What makes it even worse is the fact that conventional wisdom has it that this movie outsold the original Star Wars in Japan. While that may or may not be true, story material that was originally spread across 26 half-hour episodes has no business being crushed into a 130 minute movie.
The story’s pretty simple. Earth has been destroyed by radiation and is under attack. The ancient sea battleship Yamato is rebuilt with the awesome awesomeness of the Wave Motion Engine and is sent to the distant planet Iscandar to retrieve the solution to Earth’s problems and defeat the attacking planet, Gamilas, along the way. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, I loved the TV series’ trip to Iscandar to get the Cosmo DNA but condensing it creates an incomprehensible mess. At a couple of critical junctures, the Yamato is virtually destroyed only to be completely rebuilt in the very next shot. What the what? How’d they do that? How could anyone accept it the way it’s presented in this “film” unless they’d already seen the series? This mess is basically a Cliff’s Notes version of the series in much the same way that Order of the Phoenix is a Cliff’s Notes version of the Harry Potter novel. It simply does not work on its own. The story ends up being a random conglomeration of events and it holds no emotional weight whatsoever.
The production values are hit and miss. The animation was groundbreaking for television at the time, but it certainly wouldn’t hold up on the big screen. However, the Japanese voice actors are very good, as is the music and sound design. Sure, some of the sound work is hackneyed, but this was made in the early seventies. Those cliches were built back then, so I cut them some slack. Like I said, season one of the series was phenomenal, so the production work is sound. It just wasn’t meant to be hacked together this way. Imagine if season one of the new Battlestar Galactica series were turned into a feature film with most of the key moments intact and you’ll get the idea.
I understand that a live action version of SBY was premiered in Japan in 2010. I can’t wait to see it because it was conceived as a feature. If you can’t wait for the live action film, I’d suggest checking out Be Forever Yamato, the first in the animated series to be made for theatrical release. SBY should be avoided like the Gamilas plague.
Doomed Man is the eleventh Zatoichi film in the four short years since the series’ inception. As I see more and more of the series, I’ve come to realize that it’s a cross between a TV series and a Hollywood film series with the budget right in the middle of the two. The closest comparison in today’s media-glutted America is to a cable series like True Blood.
Doomed Man isn’t the best or the worst of the series. It’s a serviceable entry with a decent enough story about a man who asks Ichi to help him clear his name so he won’t be executed. For the first time in the series, Ichi, who has plenty of his own troubles, decides not to help but ends up in the thick of the conflict anyway. A powerful oyabun has set up the titular doomed man in order to save his own skin and Ichi just can’t let it go.
I’ve yet to figure out how these productions worked. A TV series generally uses the same crew from week to week with different directors. This allows the directors to overlap one another’s work in pre and post production while keeping the wheels turning on set. This means that the show runner, usually a producer/writer, really has the reigns and the show directors are basically project managers. But I’m not sure who was really in charge of the Zatoichi films. Unlike television, each director can put his own visual stamp on things but the stories are consistent.
In this case, director Kazuo Mori does a serviceable job but offers very little that is new or exciting. There’s a lot of wasted screen time early on where we’re treated to lengthy shots of Ichi walking in that crouch-walk he does. For a film that’s less than 80 minutes long, there isn’t much economy. The best scene is the final battle wherein Ichi slays dozens of men in a fog-shrouded town by the sea.
Shintaro Katsu is as good as ever in the title role. Even when given very little to do, he exudes charm. I doubt the series would have made it beyond the first couple of films without his involvement. His swordplay is impressive as well. I can’t figure out how some of the stunts were done without seriously hurting someone. Katsu appears to be going full out and, even though there’s no blood, he convincingly eviscerates an army in this movie.
The screenwriters (too many are credited for this to have ended well) attempt to give Ichi a sidekick but that ultimately fails to coalesce into anything interesting. The sidekick is essentially used as comic relief and abandoned altogether when he’s no longer convenient to the plot. The story isn’t nearly as engaging as it could have been because the man on death row is hardly ever seen. We’re never given much of a reason to care whether he lives or dies. I can see why Ichi wanted to pass this one up.
What really killed this one for me was the music. We’re forced to endure a film score that is a blatant attempt to imitate Hollywood features of the era. It’s overly dramatic with huge swells and “clever” hints at Japanese scales. On the whole it comes off as trite and condescending, like the music used for Holly Golightly’s upstairs neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It also doesn’t help that the soundtrack is distorted beyond recognition.
The credits indicate, as in many of these features, that the sound was by Westrex. I can’t tell if it’s the original recording or the transfer that’s at fault, but I’ve never heard such bad music reproduction in my life. I’ve heard hand-cranked 78 RPM platters that sounded better. The picture fares better, but just barely. This is another in the line of HVE video releases of Zatoichi films and the transfer wasn’t given any love at all.
Doomed Man is pretty mediocre for Zatoichi films in the early sixties. it’s worth a watch for the arrow-shooting scene and the final battle, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone but hardcore fans.
Wow, what a mess. Samurai Fiction is the Japanese equivalent of A Knight’s Tale. Like that film, this is supposed to be a comedy. While I enjoyed a few moments, the over-stylized, anachronistic presentation was hard to get past. I never cared about what happened in the story because the overt style of the picture kept me at arms length. Sure, you can make a comedy with a few laughs and nothing more, but like any movies, the best comedies put story and character at the forefront.
Maybe this film played better when it was originally released in 1998. You know, back when Clerks was king of the indies. There are definitely some bold choices here, but I’m over the whole “let’s try to make video look like black and white film” thing. The bad rock guitar soundtrack is tiring too. Some of the shot choices are interesting and well-executed, but a random string of cool shots doesn’t necessarily make for a decent film (I’m talking to you, Underworld).
It’s obvious that director Hiroyuki Yakano got his start in music videos, as this film plays like most of the Hollywood failures helmed by music vid veterans. All style – no substance. I’m not sure how producers come to the conclusion that a guy who cuts a decent Britney vid is capable of directing a feature, but that’s the world we live in.
If you want something to put up on the big screen during a samurai-themed party (yeah,right), this might fit the bill. If not, I’d avoid it and spend my time on something better. Maybe catch a few episodes of Bleach instead.
As I continue to work my way through the Zatoichi films, I am reminded of our current film heroes like Batman and Daredevil. Ichi is very much like them except for the fact that he isn’t wealthy. He’s essentially homeless, wandering the countryside wanting little more than a peaceful existence. So far in the series, he hasn’t sought out trouble, but had it thrust upon him. In Zatoichi’s Revenge (1965), the tenth film in the series, he’s confronted with such monstrous acts that he has little choice but to go after the bad guys as only he can.
Z10 really does ramp up the severity of the offenses committed by the villains. Ichi decides to visit his old massage teacher and stumbles into a situation where the local indendant is blackmailing families with false debts in order to force their female children into prostitution at his brothel. The scenes at the brothel where the daughter of Ichi’s teacher is being held are difficult to watch. The young girl is locked up, beaten, and starved with little concern for her well being beyond her ability to bring in cash from old men who have a taste for the virginal. Even in Japan, where prostitution was often acceptable (do not confuse geishas with prostitutes despite the conventional wisdom in the West that says otherwise) these extremes are undeniably cruel.
Not to fear – Ichi is well aware of what’s going on and, with the aid of a dice dealer and his young daughter, he digs in his heels and rids the village of the roaches at the top of the ladder. Along the way, he also rids the village of almost every man with a sword. You have to wonder how these places survive with most of the bread winners dying at Ichi’s hand. During the last fight in this movie I counted over forty deaths!
Director Akira Inoue tries to give the film a distinct style similar to the installments directed by Kazuo Ikehiro, but he’s not up to the task. His “style” just seems like an odd series of shots that are out of place in an otherwise basic presentation. It’s clear that the Westerns of the sixties were an influence, as evidenced by the Spanish guitar score that would be more at home in a Sergio Leone film. It’s curious that Kurosawa’s Yojimbo inspired Fistful of Dollars and then Fistful inspired these films in return.
This is another solid entry in the series, with good performances all around and a compelling story. Visually, it’s not up to the level of Ikehiro’s entries, but the script makes up for that lack by giving us some new characters that are easy to love and/or hate. The dice dealer, Denroku the Weasel, played by Norihei Miki, is especially fun to watch. So much so that I wish he and his daughter could have accompanied Ichi beyond this one film. He would have made a great Robin for Shintaro Katsu’s Batman.
I’ve never been a big fan of Takashi Miike’s films, but I may have to rethink that stance. 13 Assassins is one of the best films I’ve seen in years, and is hands-down the most entertaining modern samurai movie to date.
The premise is a fairly simple one – a sadistic leader, Lord Naritsugu, is about to be promoted to a level that will allow his crazy ass to destroy the peace in Japan with his nuthouse attitudes. Other leaders agree something must be done, but their oaths of allegiance keep their hands tied. There’s one loophole, though. Nothing’s stopping them from ordering a team to take on the mission of assassinating the freak. That’s where the titular 13 assassins come in.
The movie does such a fine job of making you care about what happens that by the time it gets to the 45+ minute battle scene at the end, it’s action has weight and emotion beyond the images seen onscreen. Miike’s penchant for over the top violence insures that we really, really want Lord Naritsugu to die in the most painful way possible. The guy is beyond extreme and we understand exactly why men would give up their lives to insure that their countrymen won’t have to suffer under his thumb any longer.
The leader of the renegade band of mercenaries is Shogun Samurai Shinzaemon Shimada, played to perfection by Koji Yakusho. He is everything I want to see in a hero. He is smart, proficient, and most of all, he is driven to achieve his goals one of which is sacrificing himself. One of his best scenes includes the moment when he realizes just what he’s been asked to do. He laughs out loud, overjoyed that he might be able to go out in a blaze of glory that will actually mean something. It gave me chills.
At some point, the Hollywood machine gave up on simple good vs. evil action and has muddied the waters of even the most banal comic book movie. The Star Wars prequels, for example, made it extremely difficult to know who was truly “good” given the knowledge of the original films. Miike’s film brings back extreme evil and combats it with a group of good guys who you just want to root for. It’s thrilling to see.
As samurai films go, I actually liked this one better than Kurosawa’s films. Granted, it couldn’t exist without Kurosawa’s work, but this one is truly modern in that every aspect of the production is hyper real. The sets reek of details and depth. Lighting is subtle and effective. The orchestral score is as good as anything John Williams has produced in recent years, spare as it is. All of the elements add up to a very cohesive whole.
The movie isn’t without flaws, though. There are a couple of CGI moments that are cringe-worthy and fifteen minutes of the film were cut from the international release. The deleted scenes are on the Blu ray disc as a special feature, and some of them really do alter how I viewed a couple of the characters. The movie plays well without the scenes, but their omission might make you question how one character in particular is still standing at the end.
I can’t recommend this feature highly enough. It has the production values of a prestige feature from the Hollywood studios, a villain you love to hate, heroes who are truly heroic, intense drama, and action scenes that will make you stand up and cheer. It’s exhilarating.
Seven is often thought of as a lucky number, so is the seventh film in the Zatoichi series worthy of its numberical place in line? Up until the rather abrupt ending, I’d have answered with a resounding “yes!”
Director Kizuo Ikehiro brings the same visual buffet to the table that he cooked up for Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, but this time the story is more coherent and the characters more clearly drawn. With each film, there seems to be a distillation process happening. The writers, directors, and star of the films learn a little bit more about what works and what doesn’t. If that’s the case for the whole series, I can’t wait to see what’s to come.
In this episode, Ichi is shot by a bounty hunter who’s out to win fame and fortune by killing the infamous blind swordsman, though I’m not sure how much fame would have come from shooting the blind guy instead of besting him in sword combat. Ichi awakens to find that he’s been saved by a local doctor who was paid by a travelling woman (Kuni, played by Naoko Kubo) who witnessed the events. Eventually, Ichi lands on her doorstep and attempts to repay her kindness through service. Like in every Z film, the beautiful daughter of the local oyabun is attracted to the blind man. Maybe it’s just the Florence Nightingale Effect, but it happens in almost every one of these movies. Maybe it’s just that our hero is a genuinely nice person.
There’s less swordplay here than in some of the Z films, but that’s a good thing since that means there’s too much going on to waste a lot of time on fights that don’t advance the story. When the blind swordsman’s sword does fly, it’s satisfying and exciting. One fight in particular, held in chest-deep river water, is not to be missed.
The plot has some good twists, but none at the expense of common sense. By the end of the film, all the disparate elements are connected in a satisfying way, but we’re still left with an Empire Strikes Back style of ending that doesn’t quite work. Unfortunately, the ending is just a a stylistic choice so the story isn’t directly continued in Z8. This is definitely one of the best Z films I’ve seen, but it could have been better if the plot were more clearly resolved in the end.
Shintaro Katsu is as sympathetic as ever in the title role of the wandering yakuza masseuse. I worry a little about some of the translations, as they always translate yakuza as gangster and oyabun as boss. While these are technically accurate, the yakuza were much more than mobsters. Some, like Kuni’s father, Bunkichi, were community leaders who held their constituents’ best interests at heart. To compare them to American gangsters does them a great disservice. Even Ichi describes himself as a gangster in several lines, and it just doesn’t make sense.
Once again, we’re treated to an inferior transfer from Home Vision Entertainment. I can see that the original film image was of high quality, but it’s so compressed here that the high contrast ratio overwhelms everything. The sound doesn’t fare much better with a distorted score that makes it sound as though you’re playing the soundtrack through a stock AM radio in a 1973 Gremlin. Once again, I pray to the Kami for a blu ray release of these wonderful films in the near future.
If you only watch a handful of Zatoichi films, this is one to see. Highly recommended. Just prepare yourself for that ending.
There’s a very good movie waiting to be discovered inside the bloated mess that is Kikujuro. Almost every shot in the film has excess that should have been trimmed. This two hour feature could have easily been cut down to 90 minutes without missing a beat. Writer, director, and star, Takeshi Kitano, must have been so in love with every single moment of film shot (mostly of himself) that he had to include it all.
There’s actually a lot to love here, but it’s buried in the bloat. The basic story involves a journey for a deadbeat asshole (Kitano as the title character) and a numb eight year old named Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) to the home of the boy’s mother. The setup really isn’t important. What’s important is Kikujiro’s ability to get into trouble and the increasing hilarity and tension this produces. There are some genuine laughs here, and Kitano is wonderful in his role but, like I said before, a little trimming would have worked wonders.
The boy acts as both an audience for Kitano’s character and an object of concern for the audience, but there’s almost no character there. He basically stands around and occasionally reacts, but I wonder what the film would have been like had Masao been written as a whole character.
There are the usual fanciful strokes that often seem out of place in Kitano’s films, and they’re equally out of place here. Dream sequences abound and do little to inform the feelings of the main characters or expand on the shoestring plot.
The film as a whole shows us a lot about life in modern Japan, and that’s where I found it most interesting. It was nice to see the real Japan through the eyes of the Japanese rather than filtered through the prism of Hollywood. The images are clean and bright, and the DVD transfer is very good. I just spent more time looking at the backgrounds than was intended.
All in all, this plays like what it is – a vanity piece for Kitano. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re already a fan and, even then, it may try your patience.
The eighth film in the Zatoichi series doesn’t let up on the momentum that had been established up to that point. This time, the effort appears to have been on developing a more interesting story and more exciting fights, and director, Kenji Misumi, achieves both. He went on to direct some of the Lone Wolf and Cub series but I remember him fondly because he directed one of my personal fovorites, Wrath of Daimajin. His directorial style isn’t nearly as flashy as that of Kazuo Ikehiro’s Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, but he builds a solid foundation for the story and insures that the audience is never lost along the way.
This time, the blind swordsman (who, if you’ve been watching these films, has started to feel like an old friend) is being tracked by a small group of bounty hunters. They accidentally kill a woman who is travelling with her baby and Ichi decides that the incident was his fault. The bulk of the film consists of our hero’s journey to return the baby to his father while he fights off attempts on his life along the way. He eventually hires a female pickpocket to be the child’s nanny so he can more readily deal with the threats to his life, and she introduces even more worries for our friend.
I found this to be the most charming of the Zatoichi stories that I’ve seen. Ichi really grows to love the child despite the obvious difficulty a blind man might have in his position. I also found the fights to be even more inventive than in previous installments. One in particular had me actually worrying that Shintaro Katsu, who plays Ichi, was in imminent danger himself. The final fight wherein his enemies fight him with long torches is certainly not to be missed.
It’s hard to believe that the series was only three years old in 1964 when this, the eighth feature, was released. The production team must have been on a schedule more like that of a TV series for them to produce so much so quickly. Sure, the films are usually less than 90 minutes long, but they have production values comparable too most features of the time. You also have to consider that there are very few scenes that don’t feature Ichi so it would have been difficult to shoot more than one film at a time.
Unfortunately, the DVD from Home Video Entertainment is yet another failure. Scenes are often too dark and the gorgeous scenery is destroyed by too much contrast. Once again, the sound is often distorted, especially during big music cues. I’m sorry to say that this seems to be the norm with these transfers. What a disappointment.
Speaking of music, the theme music to FZF is strangely reminiscent of American westerns. I don’t think Leone’s the inspiration since Fistful of Dollars came out the very same year, but the presence of guitars in the theme is interesting. Maybe the worlds of the Japanese cinema and the American western were moving toward one another even before Leone decided to remake Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
