Movielogr

Rating: 7 stars

Tags

Japan samurai

All movies seen on 04/11/2013

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Samurai Assassin (1965)

Directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Drama | Action | History

Overview

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.

Length 122 minutes

Actors

Toshirō Mifune | Keiju Kobayashi | Yūnosuke Itō | Michiyo Aratama | Eijirô Tôno | Tatsuyoshi Ehara | Tadao Nakamaru | Kaoru Yachigusa | Haruko Sugimura | Nami Tamura | Shirô Ôtsuji | Yoshio Inaba | Akihiko Hirata | Hideyo Amamoto | Ikio Sawamura | Chôtarô Tôgin | Yasuzô Ogawa | Masaya Nihei | Toshio Kurosawa | Hakuô Matsumoto | Susumu Fujita | Hiroshi Hasegawa | Chûsha Ichikawa | Komazô Ichikawa | Kôji Iwamoto | Nadao Kirino | Naoya Kusakawa | Jun'ichirô Mukai | Takashi Shimura | Yoshifumi Tajima | Mitsugu Terashima | Fujio Tokita | Yasuhisa Tsutsumi | Yurie Hidaka | Kan Hōshō | Nagayo Kita | Ren Yamamoto

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Second Mifune Productions flick this week! Also I learned there was a Mifune Productions, Mifune’s own imprint to produce films in which he would be the primary actor, I suppose. Need to read up on that (Toho is the parent company).

This is another dark chapter during the Tokugawa Shogunate. The DVD provides a lengthy essay on this period and the changes that took place including this point in time when this film takes place including the actual account of the event.

For the movie, it’s slow burn with a lot of storytelling taking place in the first half; there is traitor among this band of assassins and who is this Niiro dude? We get his backstory and the political conspiracy in addition to Niiro’s (Mifune) current struggles. A lot of talking. Not much action.

Not until the 70min mark of this 2-hour film does the “assassin” in the title begin to pay off. And it’s at that point the movie begins the upward climb toward the savage finale at Sakurada Gate. The last 50 minutes are so are damn good once you get there. Also a large cast of familiar faces and popular character actors and stars that surround Mifune, some briefly like Takashi Shimura, who has maybe 4 minutes of screen time, and Susumu Fujita as Niiro’s instructor.

Michiyo Aratama is Mifune’s equal as his love interest and past lover as another character. She’s so good and makes for an incredible image near the end. Definitely a film worth viewing for history and cast but that first half is sleepy esp. with much of it filmed in the rain.

Comments