Admittedly I decided to watch this tonight because during the Criterion flash sale the other day I saw there was a stunning box set for this film series. After clicking on the listing, I then learned this is a TWENTY SEVEN long Samurai film series. I then also learned all of the movies are around the same level of quality. As a Samuraii movie lover, this peaked my interest.
Now that I’ve seen film 1/27, I am very happy. I’ll admit, nothing in this movie blew me away, but it’s a really solid Samurai movie. I really have no complaints about anything. Zatoichi himself is a very engaging lead, and I’m already seeing how they could make so many films around him. The score is used sparingly, but when it’s used it’s hard pretty darn well. My favorite moment with the score has to be when the other sick samurai is hacking away at people and a ringing horror movie bell (?, I think it’s a bell) is blaring over everything. That was super effective.
And how could I almost forget the most important tell of quality. For any samurai movie to be good it at least has to engage in my favorite Samurai movie trope: a random firearm. I always forget these movies aren’t taking place in the 1300’s. They’re usually taking place in the 1800’s and guns definitely were a thing in the 1800’s. It is the absolute funniest thing to me though that so many Samurai movies have a random firearm at some point and I can not explain why. Yojimbo famously has one, and it’s probably my favorite time in any samurai movie. The main bad guy just has a revolver for some reason. Love that. In this movie, the main bad guy gang decides that the blind samurai is too dangerous to fight fairly and to just whip out a musket. I got a good laugh out of that.
Very engaging samurai movie. It’s fun. Nothing absolutely fantastic happens, but not every movie needs to reinvent the wheel or blow you away to be worth watching. If enough of the films in this series are around this level of quality I will 100% pick up the box set.
Admittedly I decided to watch this tonight because during the Criterion flash sale the other day I saw there was a stunning box set for this film series. After clicking on the listing, I then learned this is a TWENTY SEVEN long Samurai film series. I then also learned all of the movies are around the same level of quality. As a Samuraii movie lover, this peaked my interest.
Now that I’ve seen film 1/27, I am very happy. I’ll admit, nothing in this movie blew me away, but it’s a really solid Samurai movie. I really have no complaints about anything. Zatoichi himself is a very engaging lead, and I’m already seeing how they could make so many films around him. The score is used sparingly, but when it’s used it’s hard pretty darn well. My favorite moment with the score has to be when the other sick samurai is hacking away at people and a ringing horror movie bell (?, I think it’s a bell) is blaring over everything. That was super effective.
And how could I almost forget the most important tell of quality. For any samurai movie to be good it at least has to engage in my favorite Samurai movie trope: a random firearm. I always forget these movies aren’t taking place in the 1300’s. They’re usually taking place in the 1800’s and guns definitely were a thing in the 1800’s. It is the absolute funniest thing to me though that so many Samurai movies have a random firearm at some point and I can not explain why. Yojimbo famously has one, and it’s probably my favorite time in any samurai movie. The main bad guy just has a revolver for some reason. Love that. In this movie, the main bad guy gang decides that the blind samurai is too dangerous to fight fairly and to just whip out a musket. I got a good laugh out of that.
Very engaging samurai movie. It’s fun. Nothing absolutely fantastic happens, but not every movie needs to reinvent the wheel or blow you away to be worth watching. If enough of the films in this series are around this level of quality I will 100% pick up the box set.
