Goyokin

Lone, honorable samurai embarks on vengeful mission to stop corrupt rival samurai. He stoicly rejects the love of his faithful woman, picks up a good-natured sidekick and a couple of comic tagalongs, and slices through hordes of minions to get to the stark, lonely final showdown. Sound familiar? Goyokin doesn't do a lot to distinguish itself from dozens of similar stories, but it's done well. Entertaining (despite some slow pacing) with some really nice images along the way.

It's more the choices in location than any skill behind the camera that has delivered such impressive imagery. Every other aspect of this - from the acting (even by Nakadai), to the writing of characters, dialogue, and overall pacing - is about as lazy as you can get with this type of story.

A melancholy samurai tale which uses extensive flashbacks as part of the storytelling structure. Tatsuya Nakadai is incredible as the bug-eyed samurai haunted by his past failings. His weary performance is the best reason to watch this film.

As good as they come in the historical-loner-samurai genre. Nakadai's face will be familiar to fans of latter-day Kurosawa as the leads in both Kagemusha and Ran, but here he plays the unequivocal, steely-eyed hand of justice. Highly stylized and at times quite graphic, with occasional rough patches in production values, but overall, the attention to detail and location work is superb, with snowy set pieces and superhuman endurance from the ensemble (including a masked kodo drumming group).

It's wonderful to look at but the script is so dumb and hackneyed, I just couldn't bring myself to care.

Bookended by two very memorable scenes - the opening with the abandoned village inhabited only by crows, and the ending with the funeral drummers beating out a hypnotic rhythm. This is a film about honour in a changing world, and the main character is both heroic and flawed at the same time (always a good combo). The visuals are truly striking, particularly the scenes in the snow, and the music almost sounds like it belongs in a spaghetti western. Definitely worth a watch.

Something of a shallow, Kobayashi-lite morality tale about samurai misconduct. But no matter, because this movie is a ton of fun. From the way Nakadai inhabits the stoic ronin figure, to the thrilling action sequences, the clarity of the compositions and use of epic landscapes, this is an incredibly stylish film that has aged rather gracefully.

Good film.

The snow, the rough sea, jagged cliffs, muddy streets, and various interior spaces are more than just background scenery; they all play a part in how the action plays out. The visuals & the performances are all great. The sound design suffers a bit from some of the typical excesses of the genre & era but shows a few scenes of brilliance (the rumbling of the logs rolling down the cliff; the taiko at the end). The theme is tried & true revisionist samurai fare, but it works for me.

This was my first samurai movie I saw on a big screen at the age of 10.