The Mikogami Trilogy: The Trail of Blood, The Fearless Avenger, Slaughter in the Snow

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know me and old samurai movies.  I love them all.  The ones by the masters from the 50's and 60's are great pieces of art, and the ones from the 70's were often bloody, stylish, grindhouse flicks.  I can't pick favorites between the two.  They have samurais so they're all great.

In this entry, I'm looking at a trilogy of revenge films from the early 1970's, by director Kazuo Ikehiro, known as the Mikogami Trilogy. 

The Trail of Blood (Mushukunin Mikogami no Jokichi: Kiba wa Hikasaita), by Kazuo Ikehiro, 1972

The first film introduces us to Jokichi Mikogami, a fierce ronin mercenary.  At the beginning, he wanders into an inn, feverish.  While he's there, a gang of Yakuza jerks bust in and try to rape the girl, but Jokichi steps up to defend her, cutting the boss, Kyubei in the forehead.  He vows revenge and they take off.  Jokichi and the girl (sorry, names are tough when there's no Wikipedia for the movie I'm reviewing) soon fall in love, and he gives up his violent life in exchange for a peaceful one.

Three years later, Jokichi is still living with the girl, and they have a young son.  He gets a job opportunity, but must travel through the territory of the gang that still hates him to get there.  He promises not to fight them, and to keep his head down and get home alive.  Of course, he runs into them, and they hold him down and start bashing his pinky and ringfinger off with the hilt of a sword.  It's a pretty gruesome scene, even though the fingers are obviously fake.  When Jokichi can't stand it anymore, he swipes a sword off one of the guys, and instead of attacking them, he quietly slices off his two fingers, returns the sword, and thanks them as they all stare in shock.  Holy crap!

Unfortunately, Jokichi arrives home too late.  They already murdered his wife and son while he was away.  Aaaaaaand cue vengeance.  Jokichi finds out which bosses were behind the brutal act, and in true samurai tradition, becomes an unstoppable killing machine in order to bring them down.  He always has his wife's red belt around his waist, and he ties sharp little spikes to the tips of the remaining three fingers of his mangled hand and uses them as claws.  HELL YEAH.

It's a pretty standard revenge movie, actually, but very well executed and fun to watch.  Yoshio Harada is totally cool as Jokichi Mikogami.  There's also a mysterious one-eyed helper character named Hurricane Isaburo, but unfortunately, we never end up learning what his deal is.  The score is that weird but awesome funky music that pervaded 70's samurai movies such as the Lone Wolf and Cub series.  He even has sex with his lover with funky saxophones playing in the background.  Of course, this is an ongoing series, so he doesn't find all three bosses in this movie, he just faces off against the guy whose head he cut at the beginning (and all his men, of course).

The Fearless Avenger (Mushukunin Mikogami no Jokichi: Kawakaze ni Kako wa Nagareta), by Kazuo Ikehiro, 1972

The second film in the trilogy, The Fearless Avenger, is kind of the weak link of the three, but it's still pretty good.  This time around, Jokichi continues his relentless quest for vengeance, even walking right into a meeting of all the gang bosses and attacking them up front.  All this serves to do is get them angry, of course.

The main part of the story is about Jokichi being assigned by one Yakuza boss to protect another boss' runaway daughter and return her to him.  Of course, things end badly, and of course, Jokichi ends up butchering another army of guys.  This goes without saying.

The Fearless Avenger is lean and mean at only about 75 minutes, not including the 5-minute recap of the first film at the beginning.  It's still good, and there are some pretty surprising twists in the story, but it doesn't have a lot of character development for Jokichi, who had this great origin in the first film, and in this film just kind of spins his wheels.   I loved the final showdown, in a rocky river, with Jokichi submerging his sword arm underwater so his attackers can't see where he's pointing it.

Slaughter in the Snow (Mushukunin Mikogami no Jokichi: Tasogare ni Senko ga Tonda), by Kazuo Ikehiro, 1973

That title makes a pretty hefty promise, doesn't it?  Slaughter.  In the snow.  And let me tell you, it lives up to it.  Slaughter in the Snow is by FAR the bloodiest movie in the series.  It's also the best one, and I'm not saying that just because of the geysers of blood spraying out of chests, though that is a factor.

After the horrible events of the first two films, Jokichi has pretty much tossed aside all semblance of humanity.  As the movie opens, he just sits by his fire, quietly eating his pheasant, as a gang of bandits attacks and attempts to rape a poor girl.  He doesn't even look their way until they get in his face.  The girl follows him, despite his attempts to brush her off.

Soon, a similar scene plays out differently, as Jokichi witnesses a man save a girl from a gang without thinking twice.  Jokichi soon meets the man, an assassin named "Windmill" Kobunji, who is suffering from consumption.  He uses throwing knives with deadly accuracy, and throws them by twirling his arm like a windmill.  He's right upfront with Jokichi that he's already been paid a hefty retainer to kill him.  Despite this, they have a mutual respect for each other, and decide to travel for a while before they duel.

The strange, layered relationship between Jokichi and Kobunji is at the center of the movie.  When a bunch of men seek vengeance on Kobunji, Jokichi just sits back to watch the battle, reasoning that if they kill Kobunji, it's one less problem for him.  But when Kobunji begins coughing up blood during the battle, Jokichi steps in and scares the guys off, then takes the suffering assassin back to the inn where they met and helps nurse him back to health.

The reason I liked Slaughter in the Snow so much is the depth and complexity of the characters.  It's about Jokichi reacquiring a conscience.  The girl he rescued even calls him on his hypocrisy: He won't save a helpless girl being attacked by rapists, but now he's saving this guy who wants him dead?  I don't think Jokichi could even explain his reasoning, but I think it brought him back from the void.

The movie is also only 75 minutes long, and all the more intense for it.  The blood is a sharp red on the snow white scenery.  Kazuo Ikehiro must have liked the way red on white looked, because he pours it everywhere.  Slaughter is also the most visually stylized of the series.  Lots of really cool editing tricks and cinematography. 

There is a downside, though: The word "trilogy" is misused here.  A trilogy is when three movies tell a complete story.  Just because there are three Austin Powers movies doesn't mean it's the "Austin Powers Trilogy".  This is not the full story, and was clearly meant to continue for at least one more movie.  Jokichi never completes his vengeance on the third gang boss, and I guess he never will.  But still, Slaughter in the Snow is a great movie, even standing on its own.  I would recommend all three, but the third is by far the coolest.

The Bicycle Thief, Goyokin, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi

The Bicycle Thief, by Vittorio de Sica, 1948


Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thief (or Bicycle Thieves, depending on who you ask) is one of the best, most important, and most moving films ever made. That's not up for debate, it's earned that. Having seen the film, I can now acknowledge all those things, but I don't know, it was just so sad.

The Bicycle Thief is the relentlessly soul-crushing story of Antonio, an impoverished man who gets a job opportunity that requires he has a bike. He and his wife trade all their sheets to be able to get one, and even then, just barely. Antonio and his family treat the bike as their most precious possession. His son polishes it and has memorized every detail, down to a small dent. When Antonio goes to work for his first day, he carries his bike into the office, refusing to put it down. Then, on the job, which is riding around the city and gluing posters to walls, a man takes off with his bike.

Antonio goes to the police, who just trivialize the theft, as though it's not important. To Antonio, of course, it's the most important thing in the world. He, his son, and some friends go on a desperate search, combing the city for the bicycle. There are thousands of bicycles, and so on. The movie is just really damn sad. There are uplifting moments, and there's actually a lovely message of empathy and understanding to the whole thing. Though Antonio's desperation is blinding him to it, we can see that everybody is struggling, not just him. This is what drives people to steal bicycles.

I'm not NOT recommending the movie, it really is great, but just warning you, grab your hankies. No wait, don't use hankies, those are so gross, use a tissue. And watch something happy or fun afterwards, like cat videos or a cool-as-hell samurai movie or something.

Goyokin, by Hideo Gosha, 1969


I feel like Hideo Gosha was the last great director of the Japanese New Wave of the 50's and 60's. I don't know if this is a fact, because my knowledge is incomplete, but this is how it seems to me. While most of the other important directors of the time began making films in the 30's and 40's and were already well into their careers when they produced their seminal works, Gosha made his first film in 1964. Japanese cinema becomes a whole different beast in the 1970's, and I feel like Gosha kind of bridges the gap between the two styles.

In Goyokin, the great Tatsuya Nakadai (The Sword of Doom, High and Low, Kagemusha, among many others) stars as Magobei Wakizaka, an honorable samurai who looks on in shame as his clansmen slaughter an entire village to steal a shipment of gold. He can't go on as a samurai anymore and quits, but also promises his master and best friend, Rokugo (Tetsuro Tanba of You Only Live Twice and The Twilight Samurai, also among many others), that he won't report this transgression as long as it doesn't happen again.

Three years later, Magobei, living a peaceful life, is about to give up his sword for good when assassins sent to kill him tip him off that Rokugo is planning on butchering another village. Magobei decides to stop it from happening. Along the way, he stumbles across the girl who was the sole survivor of the massacre three years ago, and wins over a mercenary sent to kill him.

This movie is awesome. It's fun, with lots of action and adventure. Tatsuya Nakadai is totally badass as Magobei Wakizaka. There's a great scene where he is tied up and dropped into a deep pit of snow and left to die. The exact details of his escape are left to the imagination, but we're given enough of a starting point to marvel at how cool this guy is. Rokugo's plan to run a shipment of gold into the sea is pretty diabolical, and Wakizaka's plan to thwart this plan is equally clever. And of course, we get a deadly showdown between the two at the climax.

I've seen five or six of Hideo Gosha's films now, and dug them all. Though the film that follows this, Hitokiri, is a lot darker, the rest of the ones I've seen, such as Secret of the Urn have all had this kind of spirit of adventure. Goyokin is tons of fun.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi, by David Gelb, 2011


We're going to stay in Japan for our next review, though this is a very different kind of movie than Goyokin. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary about Jiro Ono, an 85 year old man who owns a tiny sushi shop that purportedly makes the best sushi in the world. Jiro has spent close to his entire life making sushi, obsessing over every detail, honing his techniques, and looking for ways to improve it. He's like Van Gogh painting the same scene over and over again, trying to find the perfect colors to represent it. Or Stanley Kubrick obsessively looking through thousands of pictures of door frames, trying to find the exact perfect one to include in his film.

We also meet Jiro's two sons; the eldest is in his 50's and is still being primed to take over Jiro's restaurant someday. He has to live with the anxiety that even if his sushi is every bit as good as his fathers, people will somehow perceive it as lesser and thus put his business under. The youngest son has been encouraged to open his own sushi restaurant that is an identical mirror image of Jiro's place. Jiro was not the best father to his sons. He was too busy thinking of sushi, but I guess he's there for them now, in his way.

The documentary is fascinating, though it can be as repetitive and single-minded as its subject. Could you imagine living your life with your brain centered on all aspects of sushi and nothing else? Of course, he's not making the sushi alone. Along with his sons, he has several apprentices. They are given years and years of rigorous training. In fact, they said it takes something like ten years before they're even allowed to handle the eggs.

What's weird is, I'm not an adventurous eater in the least bit. I've never even had sushi, but I still could totally appreciate this movie and Jiro's work. I assume this sushi is the most delicious raw fish one could ever eat, if one were into such things as raw fish. It would be like if somebody in America would dedicate their entire life to cultivating the most perfect french fry in the world... Oh man, now I'm drooling. I've gotta go.

Grab Bag Movies that Start with 'The' Edition: The Sci-Fi Boys, The Twilight Samurai, The Baxter

I've been watching a ton of movies lately. Already 20 in July alone! It's because I'm moving in August and I won't have nearly as much time to watch movies once I get there. Anyway, here's another Grab Bag of mini reviews. Stay tuned for even more!

The Sci-Fi Boys, by Paul Davids, 2006

This is a look back at the early days of special effects and science fiction movies, and how a generation of young fans revolutionized the industry. It has interviews with lots of important figures, such as John Landis, Roger Corman, Forrest J. Ackerman, Peter Jackson, Dennis Muren, Ray Harryhausen, and Rick Baker. Lots of neat moments, including footage from old home movies by these creators as young fans.

The Sci-Fi Boys is a very loving and nostalgic look back at the old days of science fiction, B-Movies, and special effects. I liked it, but it's a subject I'm already interested in. It could have been livelier. There are actually some documentaries on B-movies that I liked much better than this. Check out Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed by Mark Hartley.

The Twilight Samurai (Tasogari Seibei) by Yoji Yamada, 2002
This movie is sooooo moving! The Twilight Samurai is the story of Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai with no ambitions to rise in the ranks. His only priority is taking care of his two young daughters (they lost their mother to consumption) and his senile mother, who doesn't even remember him. When his master assigns him with the dangerous task of killing an exiled samurai who refused to commit ritual suicide, Iguchi must obey or face a similar situation for himself.

The Twilight Samurai is a really beautiful movie. It won best picture in Japan and was nominated for the best foreign film Oscar here in America the year it came out. It's a vivid and realistic portrayal of what life must have been like at the end of the age of the samurai. Everybody should watch this movie. Be warned, though: It just might make you cry.

The Baxter, by Michael Showalter, 2005
Wet Hot American Summer is one of my favorite comedies, and I like to check out any and everything by the guys behind it. I had heard mixed things about Michael Showalter's The Baxter, so I've been avoiding it in fear that I might not like it. Well, those fears were unfounded, because it was a decent little movie, with a lot of little laughs.

Showalter plays Elliott Sherman, a nice guy who lives to be what he called a "Baxter", the guy who women settle for when they can't get the guy they really love. He finds himself in that very situation when he meets Caroline (Elizabeth Banks), and gets himself stuck in a romantic entanglement with her, her perfect high school boyfriend (Justin Theroux), and the temp that he falls for (Michelle Williams). It's kind of a deconstruction of the tropes of the Romantic Comedy genre, and it's kind of just being silly.

The Baxter isn't a great movie, it's really just OK, but it has a very good cast, including the above mentioned people, and smaller roles by Paul Rudd, David Wain, Ken Marino, Michael Ian Black, and Peter Dinklage. Showalter is one of those comic actors who can make me laugh just by making a face or delivering a line a certain way, and he got me a lot in this. If you like Wet Hot American Summer, The Baxter might be worth your time, especially since pretty close to everybody involved in that turns up in this too.

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That will be all for today. Twilight Samurai is my recommendation this time. Thanks for reading!

Revenge (Adauchi)

Here's the thing: this is the last samurai movie that I can find on Netflix Instant that I haven't already seen. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need samurai movies to survive!

Tadashi Imai's Adauchi (Revenge, in English) is an effective movie that covers ground well traveled in the samurai genre: You guessed it. Revenge. You know, how revenge only leads to madness and destruction, and the undoing of not only you, but your loved ones, etc. To seek revenge is a hollow endeavor.

Revenge is the story of Shinpachi Ezaki, a young samurai at the very bottom of the military ranks of his clan. When approached and dressed down by a man from another family, higher in the social strata, he stands up for himself, and is challenged to an illegal duel to the death. His brother tries to stop it from going down, but arrives too late. Shinpachi has won the duel.

Shinpachi's family, fearing the consequences his victory will bring, argue with the clan leader that both men broke into a temporary fit of insanity when the duel broke out, and rather than have him executed, Shinpachi is exiled to a monastery.

At the monastery, Shinpachi grows paranoid and unstable, without purpose or direction. His situation only worsens when the younger brother of the man he killed seeks him out for his own revenge, and he kills him too. The only way to peacefully solve this whole ordeal and maintain his own honor and that of both families is for Shinpachi to face the third brother of his rival in a duel and allow him to win.

Wow, hey, revenge is exhausting.

Revenge is a really well done samurai movie, made in a period where, as far as I can tell, every samurai movie was really well done. I have not been let down by a samurai movie from the 50's or 60's yet. I always kind of wondered what the other studios besides Toho were up to at this time. I don't think I've seen many. Most samurai movies that get released in America begin with that Toho Studios logo. I know there were other studios in Japan, and it was nice to see that they were making quality films too during Japan's most creatively fertile cinematic period.

My review probably didn't do it much justice, but the characters in Revenge had a lot of depth and subtlety, and the story was filled with tension. I really liked the lead guy's performance and also the old man who played the monk he befriends. I don't think I ruined too much of the story, even though I went kind of deep into it. I promise you I didn't spoil the ending. Check it out.

I hope Netflix Instant puts out some more samurai stuff before I go into withdrawal and start watching Yojimbo on a permanent loop.

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (Shuriyuki Hime: Urami Renga)

The original Lady Snowblood is, for my money, one of the greatest revenge movies ever made, and also one of my favorite movies. If you are unfamiliar, it was one of Quentin Tarantino's primary inspirations for his Kill Bill movies. Major narrative elements, such as The Bride's "kill list" and the division of the story into novelistic chapters were lifted directly from Lady Snowblood. He even copied specific shots from it and included the end credits song on the soundtrack. I was aware that there was a sequel, but for some reason, it took me about 8 years before I finally got around to watching it.

The first film follows Lady Snowblood (in Japanese, Shuriyuki Hime), born in prison and spirited away to be raised as an instrument of vengeance, to be unleashed upon the criminals who murdered her mother's family. It's a complicated story, and I won't go into the details, but it ends with a whole lot of blood, a large amount of it Lady Snowblood's own. In fact, were there not a sequel, one would assume that she was dead.

At the start of the second film, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, Shuriyuki Hime is alive and kicking, and it's never really explained how. I guess we can just assume she's a fighter. With her vengeance served and no purpose remaining in her life, Lady Snowblood spends her time running from the authorities, indiscriminately killing any who attempts to take her in. This is demonstrated in a single shot scene where she mows down one after another without displaying any emotion on her face.

Finally overwhelmed, she gives up and turns herself in, and is promptly sentenced to death. She gets a stay of execution when she gets kidnapped by a government official and recruited to go undercover as a servant in order to steal a document and assassinate a known anarchist. Things go further awry when she becomes sympathetic to the anarchist's cause and turns the tables on the corrupt government official and his cronies. And of course, there's lots and lots of blood. Bright red, thick blood, unrealistically and gloriously spraying from bodies like fountains. Limbs go flying, eyes get stabbed out, there's a black plague outbreak, what more could you ask for?

The first movie was a revenge story set upon a political backdrop. This time around, the politics of the period in Japan (early 1900's) are in the forefront. It's an interesting story, and well executed (pun intended HAHA), but nowhere near as visceral and personal as the simple "I need to kill the people on this list" premise of the first one. Both films were directed by Toshiya Fujita, and both are dark, stylized, and smartly plotted.

Lady Snowblood is played by Meiko Kaji, star of the Stray Cat Rock series. She's tough, complicated, a total badass, and way sexy. If the first film was about her vengeance, and how a lifetime's pursuit of it leaves her empty and without identity, the sequel is about her finding something outside of herself to fight for and be willing to die for.

While not as great as the first film, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance is still worth looking into if you're a fan. I would recommend watching the first Lady Snowblood and deciding from there if you want more.

Kagemusha

This review is nine months in the making. I bought Kagemusha on Blu Ray in February. It took a long time to find three hours to watch it, but we finally got around to it in May. But then, every attempt to watch it was thwarted by my PS3. And now, in late November, after replacing my Blu Ray, getting my Playstation repaired, and buying a brand new damn Blu Ray player, I bring you, with great relief, my review of Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha.

Kagemusha is a sprawling samurai epic, set in the 1500s, following the Takeda clan, led by the feared and respected warlord Shingen. The film opens with a long, uninterrupted shot of what appears to be three Shingens having a conversation. In actuality, one is Shingen, one is his nearly-but-not-quite identical brother, Nobukado, who acts as his decoy (or Kagemusha). The third is a lowly bandit that Nobukado has discovered and saved from execution because of his uncanny resemblance to Shingen. He believes that this bandit could serve as Kagemusha better than he can.

His belief is soon put to the test, when Takeda Shingen is shot by a sniper and dies. If their enemies were to find out Shingen is dead, the clan would be done for, so the Kagemusha is made to replace Shingen. He must fool Shingen's clan, his family, and his enemies. Inspired by the kindness Shingen showed him, the double soon begins to carry on the ruse by choice, out of loyalty to the clan.

The legendary Tatsuya Nakadai plays the dual role of Shingen and his decoy. You may remember him as the gun-wielding gangster in Yojimbo, or maybe as the cold hearted protagonist/villain in Sword of Doom. He couldn't be more different in his roles here. Shingen is a smaller role, but must cast a huge shadow on the rest of the film. The decoy, stripped of any identity before the start of the movie, is never given a name. Where Shingen is regal and stoic, the decoy is crude and low born. It's kind of a The Prince and the Pauper situation.

Kagemusha is actually pretty delightful for the first couple of hours, before taking a dark turn, culminating in the true historical event of the Battle of Nagashino. Watching the decoy having to learn how to be another man, winning the love of Shingen's grandson, charming Shingen's mistresses, and ultimately earning the loyalty of Shingen's clan was really enjoyable and quite funny at times. The double is surrounded by many characters, and though they are not as colorful as those in Seven Samurai or some of Kurosawa's other early masterpieces, they are still interesting.

The pacing is slow and deliberate. There are many scenes played out in a long sustained single shot. Kurosawa also puts a heavy focus on the nonverbal interplay between his characters. It amazed me that sometimes he'd have like 10 different characters in a shot and you could just look at all of their faces and body language and feel like you could read them all. Pretty complex stuff.

Visually, Kagemusha is gorgeous and rich with detail. This is the first color Kurosawa film I've seen. I could tell from his earlier work that he composed every one of his shots like a painter would a painting. It turns out he paints them like a painting too. The colors are so vivid in Kagemusha, the reds and greens just leap off the screen.

I'm not sure if I would recommend Kagemusha to just anyone, however. It's probably not so much for the uninitiated. If somebody I knew hadn't seen any Kurosawa films, I'd certainly point them towards Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, etc. and if they were still coming back for more, then I would show them the less accessible Kagemusha. Still, it's another great film from possibly the greatest director.

Secret of the Urn (Tange Sazen: Hien Iai-giri)

Secret of the Urn is the tale of Tange Sazen, a one-armed, one-eyed Samurai character famous in Japanese literature. There have been many adaptations of this story and others featuring him, in manga, in movies, etc. But look at me, speaking like I'm knowledgeable of the subject, when actually, this was the first time I've ever heard of Tange Sazen. This particular version of Secret of the Urn was made in 1966, by famed director Hideo Gosha.

Hideo Gosha is a Japanese director who never really got a lot of attention here in America. A few of his movies are available here, most famously Sword of the Beast from the Criterion Collection (which I have yet to see), but for the most part, you have to find them by other means. Secret of the Urn is one of his early works, more fun and less dark than his films were eventually to become. I was elated to find it on Netflix Instant Watch.

The story begins with a samurai named Samanosuke, who is told to execute a man who is married to a girl he grew up beside. Loyally doing his duty, he is tricked and betrayed, first by the man he is executing, then by his own people. He loses his right eye and his right arm. In the scene, his arm actually flies through the air and lands in a flock of birds, scattering them into the sky.

The story picks up one year later, with Yokichi, an over-the-hill bandit overhears the lord of the Yagyu clan talking about how they need 300,000 Ryo to pay for a shrine renovation for the Shogun. Obviously, the clan would go broke with that much Ryo (I mean, obviously, right?), so the lord asks his man to retrieve the Earless Monkey Urn, which is said to contain a million Ryo.

Hearing this, Yokichi goes to his cohort, a music teacher/prostitute named Ofuji, who is really calling the shots, and they hatch a plan to snatch that can. They go to the river where the Urn is being picked up, and surprise! The samurai transporting it are attacked by ninjas! There's this really great sequence where the urn is passed back and forth between ninja and samurai as they all get cut down one after the other. Finally, a dying samurai manages to get the urn to a little orphan boy. Ofuji and Yokichi try to get it from the boy and he runs off, only to meet... Samanosuke.

Only Samanosuke no longer goes by that name, he goes by Tange Sazen. No longer the loyal and noble samurai he was only a year before, he is now bitter, grouchy, and foul mouthed. He is homeless, and supports himself as a hired sword. Sazen helps the boy, Ofuji and Yokichi get away with the urn, and joins up with them. He's pretty much doing all this to stick it to the system that threw him away like yesterday's trash.

Over the course of the movie, Tange Sazen forms sort of a family unit out of these people, and becomes the leader of the Thieve's Temple Gang, a comical group of thieves. He also gets justice for himself, gets the urn into the right hands, and uncovers corruption in the very top level of the government.

Secret of the Urn was a really enjoyable movie. The characters are all likeable. Tange Sazen is clearly a hero of the post-Yojimbo era, the flea-bitten, gruff samurai with a hidden heart of gold. The little boy doesn't care about the urn, he just wants Sazen to teach him the sword. Ofuji is sort of a scheming love interest, where you can't immediately tell if she's loyal to Sazen, or to the urn. Yokichi and the thieves are comic relief. It was interesting to me, because I've never seen a Hideo Gosha film with such light-hearted elements before.

Hideo Gosha's action sequences are always impressive. Unlike many other samurai movie battles, which were slow builds of tension as the fighters size each other up, and then suddenly over as fast as one stroke of the sword, Gosha's were more modern, fast paced, choreographed sword fights. The great twist, of course, is that Tange Sazen is only able to use his left hand. There's a scene where he's holding the urn and tossing it up in the air and mowing a couple guys down before catching it.

I have to admit, there were a couple of dangling plot threads, like when the Urn turns out to be empty with writing inside it, they never really explain what the writing means, and where the million Ryo is. It's surely addressed in some of the many other versions of the story, right? Maybe they didn't explain it all because the story is so well known in Japan that everybody there just knows the answer. I don't know, I'm no Japan expert, just a real big fan of their stuff.

So check this movie out. It's on Netflix for all to watch. And if you're interested in digging deeper for other Hideo Gosha fare, might I recommend the two films he made after this, Samurai Wolf and Samurai Wolf 2? Those are also a whole lot of fun, and have a pretty awesome lead character.

The Sword of Doom

It's been a while since I've done an old samurai movie, hasn't it? To be perfectly honest, that last one I watched, Samurai Rebellion, was such a downer that I was a little reluctant to watch another. Well, enough time has passed for me, so here comes The Sword of Doom, a 1966 classic directed by Kihachi Okamoto.

The Sword of Doom is dark, intense, and brutal, but it's much less of a downer than Samurai Rebellion for one reason: you are not supposed to like the main character. I'm not sure I've seen a samurai movie told from the perspective of such a bad guy before.

The Sword of Doom stars Tatsuya Nakadai, best known to westerners, perhaps, as the gun-wielding villain in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Nakadai plays Ryunosuke Tatsue, a stone cold bastard of a man who is introduced to us by killing a harmless old grandfather for no real reason (OK, the old man was praying for death at a shrine, but it wasn't Ryunosuke's place to carry it out), and not registering a bit of emotion for doing so.

He goes back to the village, where he is participating in a Kendo tournament. A woman visits him, begging him not to defeat her husband in the battle. He scoffs, claiming swordsmanship is to a man what chastity is to a woman. He tells her he'll lose the battle if she has sex with him. She complies, her husband finds out and divorces her on the spot. The friendly, no-strings-attached tournament battle has now become a grudge match. Ryunosuke kills the guy and is exiled from his clan (killing many more guys on the way). The lady he nailed catches up to him, and says she has nothing and asks to go with him.

Two years later, he's living with her in exile, under assumed names. They have a baby from their initial encounter. He runs into an old servant of his family's who tells him that his own father, on his deathbed, regretting having unleashed such an evil man onto the world, has sent the brother of the man he killed to find and kill him.

There's way more, but I'll stop there. It's pretty complicated, right? I wasn't expecting such a complex story, most samurai movies tend to be pretty straight forward. But it was also engrossing. There are a whole bunch of characters surrounding Ryunosuke and his heinous acts, and they're all connected to each other somehow. It actually feels quite Shakespearean. There's the granddaughter of the man he slaughtered in the opening, her uncle who raised her, and Toshiro Mifune as a master swordsman of another school. Mifune doesn't have a huge role, but it's a very important one, and he owns it, and yes, he does get to mow some people down.

There's a whole lot of slaughter in The Sword of Doom. More than I've seen in most 60's samurai movies, but way, way less than the crazy ones of the 70's. In fact, the last 10 minutes or so is non-stop samurai sword action (my favorite kind of action).

The ending was a little confusing to me at first. There have been all these interwoven, complicated stories going on, and none of them pay off! I thought maybe they were trying to make a statement about something. I then did a little of research on Wikipedia and found out that The Sword of Doom was meant to be the first part in a trilogy of films, based on a classic piece of Japanese literature. The ending was a big cliffhanger that never got resolved. What a letdown it was to get so wrapped up in a story only to find out that I was never going to see it end.

Lack of resolution aside, I kind of loved The Sword of Doom. I got very involved in it, and never had any idea what was going to happen next. The cinematography, sound design, acting, and action scenes were all top notch. And the ending wasn't a total downer, because there wasn't really an ending! I hear the story was adapted a couple more times before this version was made. I'm wondering if those versions were any good, and if I can find them anywhere, so I can get a better idea of the full story.

Samurai Rebellion

Masaki Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion is a powerful 1967 film about the spirit of defiance. It stars the great Marlon Japando himself, Toshiro Mifune as the obedient patron of a samurai family, who, through a series of horrible injustices acted upon his family by his lord, is slowly pushed to act out in open rebellion. Like many samurai films of this era, it's a pretty dark story, and, well, these things just don't tend to end well in Japanese stories.

The story is actually pretty dense. As stated above, Mifune plays Isaburo, a low man on the samurai totem pole who has spent his entire life laying low and doing as he's told. He is regarded as a great swordsman, but has always lacked the drive to really stand out. He married his wife out of duty and political convenience, and has thus spent the last 20+ years in a loveless marriage.

His circumstances change when the lord he serves under demands that his son take a girl as his wife. The girl in question is considered damaged goods, as she was a former concubine of the lord, who, after bearing him a son, physically attacked the lord. Isaburo tries to refuse, despite the political repercussions these actions would have on his standing and his family. His son, raised with his father's sense of duty, steps in and volunteers to take the girl as his wife.

Cut forward two years, Isaburo's son and now daughter-in-law have fallen in love and had a daughter of their own. Things are going well, until the lord's own son and heir dies, and the son the girl bore is now his heir. Seen as dishonorable that the heir to the realm does not have a mother, the lord demands the girl back.

Moved by his son and daughter-in-law's love, and the threat of her being taken away, Isaburo is pushed to take a stand, along with the two of them. This tears his family apart, and puts all of their lives in danger, but for the first time in his life, Isaburo feels alive. I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but it gets pretty dark.

Kobayashi's filmmaking is superb, from the very opening scene, pulling focus from Isaburo's sword in the foreground to Isaburo himself in the background (likening him to his weapon), to his first subconscious act of rebellion, walking off the stone path in his yard, and leaving a trail of footprints in the neatly raked zen garden. The tension builds slowly and then bursts at the end with two bloody, fast-paced action sequences. I also loved the flashback-within-a-flashback utilized when Isaburo's son tells him of when his wife told him her side of the whole ordeal with the lord.

As tragic as Samurai Rebellion is, it does end with a little bit of hope for the audience to latch onto, but man, it's a bit of a tough ride getting there. I don't mind downbeat movies once in a while, but generally, I'm a happy ending kind of guy. I certainly couldn't watch movies like this one all the time. That said, I'm glad I saw it. I just wish they would make a movie called something like "Three Happy Samurai on a Sunshine Mission of Love and Blood-Spurting Decapitations" once in a while.