El samurai asesino

Samurai Assassin is a tricky film. It tries to balance neatly between the chambara and jidai-geki. As a jidai-geki it falls close to Masaki Kobayashi's amazing masterpieces Seppuku and Samurai Rebellion in its resemblance of an ancient Greek tragedy filled with tragic irony and a sense of inescepable doom. On the chambara front it takes a while to deliver but when it does, it's all guns blazing; the final fight in the snow ranks as one of the greatest battle sequences in 60's samurai cinema.

What hampers Samurai Assassin is both the very convoluted plot (even by jidai-geki standards) and the narration that should have been skipped altogether (especially in the ending). The plot although well constructed may suffer under close scrutiny. Of course nothing a little suspension of disbelief can't solve. Still, it devotes too much time and detail to subplots and flashbacks that ultimately detract from its goal: building momentum for the final confrontation (both physical and emotional). Tsuruchiyo's backstory for example is spread over 30 minutes and while it gives a solid foundation to the character, you can't help but wonder what it has to do with the first half hour. It all clicks together at some point but it would have benefited immensely from tighter plotting (20 could have been clipped). Less detail, narration and names-dropping, more visualization.

No matter. Samurai Assassin is still a decent film with some memorable scenes. It starts to pick up steam after the 70 minute mark and finishes on a spectacular note. The final battle in the snow is a marvel to look at and features some top notch swordfighting, with Toshiro Mifune simply owning every frame with his impeccable physical skills. It's a very bleak and ironic ending however; there's no valliance or social status to be gained for Mifune's character. I don't want to spoil it any further cos it's easily the best part of the movie.

Okamoto, a great chambara director of the 60's, was well on his way to bigger and better things. Just one year later, Sword of Doom would go on to become one of the best Japanese movies of all time. Three years later, the thoroughly enjoyable Kiru! would add some tongue-in-cheek spirit to Okamoto's often nihilistic style. Still, Samurai Assassin is a welcome addition to his ouevre that might not be excellent and thus not a good entry point to both Okamoto and the jidai-geki but it's recommended to genre fans.

The way that Kihachi Okamoto stages Samurai Assassin feels akin to that of a Shakespeare play, you always know who's in command of the scene by how everyone is positioned and how he moves his camera, making gorgeous use of the outdoor black and white photography and Tohoscope format. The first half is a deliberate slow burn, comprising excessive exposition and complex characterisations, sparsely populated by swift, decisive clashes of swords. The second showcases the ultimate downfall of those most revered by Japanese society, akin to that of a gritty crime-noir protagonist, and a final bout that rivals duels seen in the Zatoichi series. Punctuated by its prolonged genre-shattering monologues, the powerhouse performances of its cast, particularly that of the ever-captivating Toshiro Mifune and its spectacular climax will leave any fan of Okamoto's other works hungry for more.

Samurai Assassin is a slow and steady film, but I mostly liked it overall. It's about a complex historical event that mostly focuses on an assassination attempt, particularly leading up to it, and the ferocious battle it culminated in. It condenses quite a lot into just two hours, and had narration which helped. Some may find it overbearing or even intrusive, but I fear I would've been lost without it, in all honesty (and admitting that at the risk of sounding stupid).

There isn't tons of action, but the action there is here delivers (much like the similarly bleak Harakiri, which could be called a samurai movie, but not really an action movie). Also, Toshiro Mifune is fantastic, in the lead role (as expected, seeing as he never seemed to phone it in).

Samurai Assassin is a complicated story but easier to follow than director Okomoto's excellent Sword of Doom made a year later. While it is clear that the band of assassins is seeking revenge on an official for an earlier purge on the assassins' clans, we never learn about the original reasons for their enmity. Historically, the disagreements concerned relations with foreign countries who were seeking to open up Japan to trade, but this is never alluded to in the film. The driving forces of the story, and they are good ones, are Niino's (Mifune) ambition to achieve full samurai rank and the paranoia of the leaders of the assassin band. These two forces interact nicely as the plot unfolds. Eijiro Tono (the innkeeper who befriends Mifune in Yojimbo) does his usual terrific job as the merchant who helped raise Niino and tries to protect him from meeting a tragic fate. Highly recommended for samurai and Mifune fans.

I am rather disappointed in Kihachi Okamoto's Samurai Assassin. I am a huge fan of his 1966 film, Sword of Doom, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the best "pure" samurai film, at least on the same level as anything by Kurosawa. Samurai Assassin was made the previous year. It is about a siege around Edo castle, and concentrates on one warrior, played by Toshiro Mifune, who desperately wants to become a samurai. He has been turned down in the past, though, because his mother was a geisha and his father was unknown.

The script is the main culprit here. It's far too slow, and far too many names are dropped. For an American, anyway, it becomes increasingly difficult to process so many multi-syllabic Japanese names. Eventually, I didn't care at all about what was happening. Okamoto was obviously trying to go for the type of slow-build that was achieved, for example, in Misaki Kobayashi's excellent Sepukku (aka Hara-kiri, 1962), but the script is far too wordy.

For most of the 2 hour 2 minute run, I was just concentrating on the beautiful cinematography. The black and white in this film is truly exquisite. A few good scenes managed to pop up here and there. Fortunately, Samurai Assassin ends on a fantastic note. The final samurai battle is one of the best I've ever seen. Okamoto uses snow as a prop as well as Kurosawa uses rain (there is a great snow battle in Sword of Doom, as well), and the level of dramatic irony equals some of the best Greek tragedies. My final judgement: Samurai Assassin is worth watching if you are a fan of samurai movies, but it is not a high priority. It is definitely a don't-see for anyone who has never seen one of these films before (start with Kurosawa, The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Hidden Fortress for starters) or anyone who is unsure of whether they would be entertained by something like this. 7/10.