An intriguing and entertaining
Samurai film to watch where bullets and swords, loyalty and betrayal run
parallel to dynamic plot. Two wandering strangers arrive in a town seeking food
and encounter a dispute between two clans. It’s odd pair of samurai, where one
is disillusioned samurai with a past, the other is wannabe noble samurai. Their
constant sweeping of sides between two rebel clans keeps the film in an interesting
flow. The film has violent and brutal sword action but it’s not out and out
samurai action. Along with edgy action, quirky humor go hand by hand throughout
the film. And yes, it has interesting characters to watch further.
The film bears so much
resemblance between Leone’s ‘A Fistful of Dollars’. The title score and
background of Masuro Sato sounds so much like Morricone, its opening wide shot where a stranger ronin facing lonely town amid wild storm seeking
food encounters another weird samurai also seems like a scene of Leone film. The film also bears so much resemblance
to Kurosawa’s ‘Sanjuro’ and it mocks the status of Samurai by making him lurking
between ridiculous idiot and smart ass. Like Mifune’s interesting queer
characters in ‘Yojimbo’ and ‘Sanjuro’, Tatsuya Nakadai's Gento is a smart ass
samurai to watch. Kihachi Okamoto playfully pulled the genre and source
borrowed from elements of conventional samurai cinema and Italian Spaghetti
westerns and it almost gave me combined pleasure of western meets samurai.
Ratings- 7.5/10
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