Dai-bosatsu tôge
Directed by:
Kihachi OkamotoScreenplay:
Shinobu HashimotoCinematography:
Hiroshi MuraiComposer:
Masaru SatōCast:
Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama, Yûzô Kayama, Toshirō Mifune, 佐藤慶, Kō Nishimura, Takamaru Sasaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Shôji Ôki, 田中邦衛 (more)Plots(1)
Wandering samurai Ryunosuke lives his life in a maelstrom of violence. A gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule he kills without remorse, without mercy. (Criterion)
Reviews (1)
This samurai film is more complex and less poetic than, for example, the Lone Wolf and Cub movie trilogy. There is no character with whom we can identify. The film is a psychological study of a man – a demon – who is bad to the bone. The dark atmosphere of the film is so thick that you could cut it with a knife, but the hasty ending fatally undermines all meaningfully developed storylines. The result looks as if Okamoto shot the film without the last pages of the script, or as if filming had to be prematurely stopped and an unfinished version was released to the world. I was not particularly pleased with the fight scenes, which are closer to theatrical artifice than samurai film classics.
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