Os Sete Rebeldes

Nothing prepared me for the laughter and all-around entertainment offered by this film. The writer, director and actors manage to have fun with icons of Japanese society (e.g., a card shark priest, an honest bureaucrat who has never visited a brothel, a noble peasant, etc.,) while maintaining a good pace with the swordplay and forward movement of the story line. Nakadai is brilliant as the "been there, done that" samurai, who reveals much of the story's insanity to us through whispered comments and observations. Viewers might need a scorecard to keep track of all the double-crossing and back-firing that takes places, but Kiru is tremendous fun from beginning to end. And it's the only movie I've seen with the ugliest chicken in the world serving as a leitmotiv.

Kill! follows two ronin who are caught up in the confounding intrigue of a local clan. Genta (Nakadai) a former samurai and yakuza member looks on as a group of seven retainers kill their master under orders from Ayuzawa (Koyama) the clan's leader. They are subsequently betrayed and cornered in a mountainside hobble. On the other side is Hanji (Takahashi), a farmer and relative novice who hopes to get into the clan's good graces and is brought along to hunt down the seven assassins. While Genta and Hanji are on opposite sides of the clan's convoluted back-and-forth, they form a bond and find themselves playing one side against the other.

Kill! is a sneaky, Manzai inspired kick in the pants to samurai adventure tales which has dominated the Western notion of Japanese cinema for half a century. Even if you're brand new to Chanbara, you're at least familiar with the popular titles of Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo (1961) and the Zatoichi series (1962-1989). Their pensive, wistful examinations of the Bushido Code are often punctuated by flairs of Western inspired violence that audiences all over the world ate up like gobs of rolled sushi. And just like in America, Italy, France, Mexico et al., Japan contended with a vibrant counterculture movement that rapturously embraced maverick artists and film directors. Kill!, while not as immediately known as Rashomon (1950), was for all intents and purposes, the counterculture's happy warrior.

Throughout the film are a litter with characters, who on all sides vary from hypocritical to downright disgusting. Ironically, other than the principle rogues, the only other redeemable characters are Oikawa (Kubo) the leader of the encumbered seven and Jurota (Kishida) the lead guard; two characters duty bound to kill one another. Yet even though they are the only characters to hold to the Bushido Code while no one's looking, they are also just smart enough to realize they're trapped by the twisted machinations of Ayuzawa and their own stupid pride.

Director Kihachi Okamoto along with Seijun Suzuki and Kon Ichikawa was among the nation's most radical insurgents and found hypocrisy in every system ancient and contemporary. Over a career that spanned six decades, the WWII veteran made over forty films many of which dealt with the absurdities of war. He intermingled high-action with low- brow comedy, employing a lyrical style that contemporaries likened to over-the-top musical only without the music.

While previous works like Samurai Assassin (1965) and The Sword of Doom (1966) saw Okamoto on his best behavior, by 1968 the gloves came off. Kill! openly and repeatedly mocks the lithe practices of the samurai, at one point using a solstice celebration to humorously distract from an ambush. The conscience of his film (and audience POV) is esteemed Japanese legend Tatsuya Nakadai who is certainly no stranger to tearing down legends and picking at newly made scabs. While contemporary Toshiro Mifune made over thirty movies building up and championing the honorific exploits of the samurai, Nakadai's cool, collected work in Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri (1962) single- handedly obliterated all the legends. While Kill! is comparatively light, employing a kick'em-while-they're-down mentality, its arguably much more fun to watch than Harakiri.

Combining exciting swordplay, crackling dialogue, absurd humor and sly references and take-downs of other films (including as especially Kurosawa's Sanjuro (1962)), Kill! is a brilliant and fun little film. It offers interesting and complex characters and a story that confounds and confuses though in the same way 1968 confounded and confused the world. Before declaring 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), If.... (1968) and/or Night of the Living Dead (1968) the most radical film/s of the sixties, check out Kill! and tell me you're not at least delighted.

With all its dark humor and cynical attitude towards samurai code of honor, Kill! comes as a truly unformulaic and genre-bending period drama. Written and directed by the famous Kihachi Okamoto, the film's loosely based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's widely read short story Peaceful Days (also the basis for Kurosawa's Sanjuro). Kill! (or Kiru in Japanese) combines a well-crafted, complex plot with audaciously choreographed fight scenes, some visually-stunning, long shots of Japanese landscapes, with a bunch of witty - and often farcical - dialogues.

The picture presents a story about two luckless, hungry would-be warriors, who find themselves in the middle of a ferocious battle between the opposing sides of a dangerous yakuza clan. Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a former samurai, who got tired of the difficult lifestyle of a wandering ronin. He wasn't able to find any other work, and just wound up in the deserted city, where he met Hanjiro (Etsushi Takahashi), an ex-farmer who wants to become a samurai, but didn't have a chance to prove his abilities yet. As soon as the two discover that the abandoned city is a battleground for a merciless group of samurai retainers, it's simply too late, and they get dragged into the whole deadly intrigue in just a matter of minutes. It becomes clear that one side of the conflict betrayed the other, and the resolution of the struggle might come only when one of the parties kills the other. In the cutthroat game of murder and betrayal, the two main characters take differing sides, and in order to achieve success they need to kill each other at first. Though Hanjiro's first assignment as an aspiring samurai is to dispose of Genta, he hesitates for a long time, as Genta proved to be a valuable source of information regarding the precious samurai life. As the tension mounts, and both groups become more and more irritated and bloodthirsty, Hanjiro and Genta decide to team up and outsmart everyone in their way, leading on to one of the most riveting and satisfying finales in a samurai picture ever filmed.

The problem with Kill! is that it's not as well-known around the world as it really should be. Moreover, it's simply an under-watched samurai epic, even though it actually shares - and makes fun of - all the far-reaching values of many prominent Kurosawa pictures. Here the portrayal of typical samurai warriors is a most parodical one, as Kill! shows so deliberately that there are those, who behave only badly and those, who behave only honorably, and there's nothing in-between. It's a game-changer of sorts when it comes to the topic of samurai, given its highly fanciful attempt at denuding all the hidden aspects of those seemingly convoluted personas.

The cinematography is as raw-looking as it is actually picture-perfect. It brings out all that's eye-popping about the beautiful, yet blood-filled, Japanese scenery.

Kill! also references various other samurai pictures, playing with the idea of a dramatic and serious samurai film, giving itself an utterly lighthearted tone. Kihachi Okamoto created a little, under-appreciated gem that's not only engaging, but also truly smart and concise.

As films like 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' serve as anti-Westerns because of their morally ambivalent characters who fly in the face of traditional good guy/bad guy roles, it seems to me that 'Kill!' serves as an anti-samurai film of sorts. There are few signs of a code of honor to be found here, and the samurai (or would-be samurai) fight instead out of some personal motivation, like hunger or ego. One of them (Tatsuya Nakadai) is actually an ex-samurai, and he regularly cautions another man (Etsushi Takahashi) against taking up the profession.

I liked that aspect of it, but what stopped me from liking it as a whole was how messy and confusing the story was. That may have been the point, that it's all helter-skelter and you have different clans killing one another for reasons they (and the viewer) aren't completely sure of, with powerful men in the background quietly pulling the strings, but I think that could have been illustrated in a more satisfying way. The film blends together so many elements, parodying famous samurai films like Sanjuro and Yojimbo, getting in battle scenes of its own, and including some comedy, the more humorous moments of which take place in a brothel. I would have liked it more if it had been a fully comedy or a full revisionist samurai film with a better plot, but as it was, it ended up in a weird middle ground for me. Anyway, it's a wild ride and I'm sure more suitable for connoisseurs of the genre, but it was a little too messy for me, and I probably missed some of its references.

Tatsuya Nakadai is no stranger to Samurai films, having played in Ran, Yojimbo, and Sanjura among the almost 100 films he has done. This film is based upon the same book as Sanjura.

Tatsuya Nakadai plays Genta, a yakuza that travels from town to tow. He meets up with Hanji (Etsushi Takahashi) a farmer who wants to be a Samurai. Reminds you of the farmer in the Magnificent Seven who wanted to be a gunfighter.

They get caught up in a local fracas that pits seven samurai against a lord taking over the town. It is a one-sided fight, to say the least.

You will find some Kurasawa in here, as well as some Clint Eastwood as "the man with no name"; along with some very funny dialog. All of this will serve to keep you glued to the action until the very end.