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Sometimes foreign language films simply exist across an insurmountable cultural divide that renders them indecipherable here. Hitoshi Matsumoto‘s Saya-zamurai [Scabbard Samurai] perfectly exemplifies through an obtusely-constructed first third before hitting its stride. Comically uneven at the start, I was left scratching my head and wondering if I was missing the joke. An old, toothless samurai with an empty scabbard breathlessly and wordlessly runs through the Japanese countryside with his young daughter following closely behind as three assassins – introduced in freeze-frame – arrive to inflict what should be mortal wounds. The attacks excise the would-be killer and victim from their backgrounds, placing them on black as bright red spurts forth from the aging relic’s body in slomotion. The samurai wails in pain, the girl heals him with a special herb, and it all happens again.

This prologue quickly instills a fear that the rest will end up a long and arduous journey...