Zatôichi

Exceeded my expectations; its attempts at a more "modern" style (a bit more blood, a bit of sex, an 80s pop soundtrack) are not an improvement but they're fairly restrained. It does have a more cinematic feel than most of the series, and features memorable villains. A good finale, or coda if you prefer, to the series.

Beautiful score.

Zatoichi a escuridão é sua aliada estreava há 35 anos no Japão. O mais estranho é que hoje também é aniversário de estreia do The Crow e em ambos esses filmes houverem mortes acidentais de atores por armas supostamente cenográficas que na verdade eram reais. Creep. No mais achei um encerramento meia boca, acho que esperava uma morte digna do Ichi depois de 26 filmes. YTS.

Shintaro Katsu returns to Zatoichi one last time in a send off that could have reached further in being a finale, yet is still a solid entry in the series. I wish it was more, but I'm glad it exists even as it is.enough in it to validate its existence, even though it winds up sticking to the series formula and doesn't ponder the looming end of a man whose life has been violence.

All the scenes with Zatoichi are at the very least enjoyable, but unfortunately half the movie is made up of incomprehensible Yakuza scenes that fail to make much sense of this hard-to-follow plot. There's great moments throughout and the action is still impressive, but sadly enough this fun series goes out with more of a whimper than a bang (except for Zatoichi himself, who finally gets some).