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Zatoichi
Meets Yojimbo |
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review | notes | availability | |
Toshiro Mifune and Shintaro Katsu |
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Year:
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1970 |
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Director:
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Kihachi
Okamoto |
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Producer:
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Shintaro
Katsu |
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Cast:
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Shintaro
Katsu, Toshiro Mifune, Shigeru Koyama, Ayako Wakao,
Osamu Takizawa, Masakane Yonekura, Shin Kishida, Kanjuro
Arashi, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Gen Kuroki |
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The
Skinny: |
Zatoichi the blind swordsman
is weary from his last violent encounter. Enchanted
by memories of the smells and sounds of a favorite village,
he returns there for a much-needed rest. There's only
one problem: he has a very large price on his head,
and a mysterious hired samurai, or yojimbo, intends
to collect. Japanese screen legends Shintaro Katsu and
Toshiro Mifune share the screen as Zatoichi Meets
Yojimbo! |
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Review:
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This installment in the immensely popular Zatoichi
series benefits greatly from the swaggering, drunken
belligerence of Toshiro Mifune, a veteran actor well-known
in the west for his portrayal of a hired swordsman in
Yojimbo (1961) and the humorous, violent Sanjuro
(1962). The film relies on Mifune and leading man Shintaro
Katsu to hold the audience's interest with their banter,
while constructing an intricate plot involving corrupt
officials, family betrayals, and of course, a cataclysmic
final battle in the streets.
In the opening sequence, Zatoichi
dashes frantically through tall grass in a driving rain,
pursued by unidentified assailants. He turns and cuts
two of them down, then finds a hiding place and takes
refuge from the others and the torrential downpour.
Scowling, he laments the violence of his nomadic life,
and his thoughts turn to a favorite village, one he
hasn't seen in years. In the next scene, he is out of
danger, approaching this paradise on a sunny day following
the smell of flowers, and the trickling of a serene
brook. He cannot see the body of a young man lying face-down
in that same brook, the first ominous portent that all
is not well in the small village. As he clicks his cane
against the familiar burial markers along the roadside,
he cannot see the rows upon rows of new graves.
While Zatoichi was away, the
village fell on hard times and was taken over by a group
of violent criminals. The blacksmith is now hard at
work supplying all the hired thugs with their swords,
and the stonemason is busy churning out grave markers.
At the government coin mint, a crime boss and his more-respectable
youngest son are stealing gold by debasing coins, taking
a little gold out of each coin minted. Rumors abound
that somewhere in town they've concealed a vast treasure,
keeping it out of reach of the eldest son and his hoods,
thugs, ruffians, etc. There's also a bounty on Zatoichi's
head, a product of his earlier adventures, in which
he cut down several high-ranking yakuza bosses, along
with scores of their followers.
The scheming eldest son of
the crime boss has hired a samurai (Mifune), to add
a little backbone to his army of mostly useless hoods.
He is a skilled fighter, but his mercenary nature makes
him more inclined to lie around in his bedroll sleeping
off a perpetual hangover until a cowardly group of thugs
tell him of the reward for Zatoichi's head. In a humorous
scene, the staggering yojimbo attempts to capture the
blind swordsman, but they have both had quite a lot
to drink, and since this isn't a kung-fu film, inebriety
doesn't do much to improve their fighting abilities.
They utterly fail to operate their weapons, and instead
settle on sharing a few drinks at the inn. As they become
friends, tensions between rival factions hit a fever-pitch,
and eventually, all hell breaks loose, leaving the two
men on opposite sides of the conflict, and inevitably,
crossing swords.
In the action sequences, Katsu
rises to the occasion, and he should, considering this
is the 20th Zatoichi installment, and he has
choreographed his own moves in each one. He draws his
cane sword quickly, dispatches multiple opponents with
subtle flicks of his wrist and a not-so-subtle stabbing
motion, and before the last one hits the ground, he
has sheathed his sword and is admonishing them for trying
an under-handed sneak attack on a blind man. Fans of
Japanese swordplay films should be used to this sort
of fast-paced, brutal fighting, but those of you looking
for more drawn-out, carefully choreographed, almost-balletic
duels should probably look elsewhere.
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
delivers on the promise of a duel between the two leads,
but not without exploring the comic possibilities of
their shared screen time. It takes some attention to
the plot and various minor characters to fully understand
what's going on, but the interaction between Katsu and
Mifune alone is worth the price of admission, and on
the whole, this is a very satisfying film experience.
(Rudolph Tiemler 2004) |
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Notes: |
Lead actor and producer Shintaro Katsu also produced
the popular Lone Wolf & Cub series of films,
and directed two Zatoichi titles.
Katsu faced yet another martial arts legend,
Jimmy Wang Yu, in Zatoichi Meets The One-Armed Swordsman
(1971). |
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Availability: |
DVD (USA)
Region 1 NTSC
AnimEigo
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Japanese Language Track
Removable English Subtitles
Cast Biographies, Lone Wolf & Cub Trailer
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image
courtesy of Animeigo
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Copyright ©2002-2017 Ross Chen
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