or-elsewhere

The crossover with the Hong Kong franchise not so long after the Yojimbo crossover suggests that they were running out of ideas for Zatoichi. And yes, after watching this it does seem that they returned to the well once too often to find it as dry as dust.

I found the One-Armed Swordsman's combat scenes to be quite awkward and clumsy, affecting my ability to become absorbed by the movie. The flying jumps he does do not sit well either. However, Shintaro Katsu is still magnificent as the star and we see a more sadistic side to him here, which is intriguing.

Worth watching once, but it's one of the weakest links in the chain.

Whilst the cinematography is on the upper echelons of sleekness in the Zatoichi series, the story is rather trivial and rehashed. Yojimbo just feels like he's been shoehorned in, and as a consequence is flatly one-dimensional; like a cardboard cutout peeling at the edges. He also seems to be in most of the scenes, which are just him being drunk and shouting. If they had made some judicious cuts we wouldn't have to wade through the bloated 2 hour runtime. I was interested in the darkly menacing character of Kuzuryu, played magnificently by Shin Kishida. But alas, he is underutilised. With his nihilistic look he would have made a worthy archnemesis for Zatoichi. Overall the movie is just so-so with little rewatch value. One of the lesser titles in the Zatoichi series, despite Toshiro Mifune featuring.

I probably would have loved this movie had I seen it when I was a child. But watching it as an adult, all I find is a hackneyed and long-winded kung fu flick. The choreography of the fight scenes is nothing to write home about either, though they are scant and sporadic in this rather predictable and trite tale. Bear in mind that Enter The Dragon was released five years prior to The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin; compare the two of them and you will see how dated and clichéd this movie must have seemed even upon it's release. I do like the setting of these Hong Kong movies though, that's really all that saves it from a lower rating for me.