Highly-rated Samurai pic from writer/director Hideo Gosha is expertly made and intriguing in its critical approach, but ultimately too brooding, even glum. It’s Runaway Ronin/Pot o’ Gold storyline insufficient to justify the wholesale slaughter of so many warriors. (It’s like a human abattoir in the fields out here. Yikes!) Mikijirô Hira is the handsome, stoic Ronin hunted by various clans (minions & samurai) after murdering a high minister. (He seems to be attempting some sort of reform, but Gosha doesn’t exactly spell these things out.) The chase comes to a head in a forbidden area rich in easily mined gold and busy with poachers working the soil & rivers. But is the married couple we meet working there toiling for their own profit or for one of the clans? Why else would a husband refuse to give up the location of his gold to bandits threatening his wife with death . . . or worse. Like the classic Jack Benny ‘Your money or your life’ routine, but played completely straight.* Actually, there is one humorous character, an honestly venal sidekick for Hira, the one endearing male character in the film.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Fine pieces of beautiful filmmaking in here (sword fights where you almost believe one guy could take out fifty attackers; tragic scenes of violence against women). But on the whole, Gosha’s overlooked THE WOLVES/’71 offers the better intro to his work. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/shussho-iwai-wolves-1971.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Benny’s famously delayed reply: ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking!’
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