Hey folks, Harry here... The following reviewer didn't like ZATOICHI, a film that has had great success at many festivals... here look: Best Director - Marrakech International Film Festival. People's Choice Award - Toronto International Film festival. Audience Award, Future Film Festival Digital Award, Open Prize, Special Director's Award - Venice Film Festival. Frankly... that sounds like a pretty damn high quality film, and anybody that knows Kitano's work, knows it is non-traditional and brilliant. Here's one point of view on the film from Sundance... And if you are not familair with his genius.. Here are the films of his you must check out: FIREWORKS, TABOO, BOILING POINT, VIOLENT COP and BROTHER. Not available through Amazon are BATTLE ROYALE and SONATINE and DOLLS - all the last two he directed, but B.R. - he just rules in. Discover Kitano if you haven't... it'll be like walking through a door you didn't know existed.
Hello from theBeehiveState! Well, I live here inSalt Lake Cityso I am lucky enough to attend several Sundance screenings ever year. This year I was able to see the new Zatoichi film. I am a fan of the original series, so I was pretty excited about this new installment. Let me just get this out of the way! , it was a huge disappointment. They took Ichi the benevolent blind swordsman and MTV'd him all up. The title should have been Zatoichi-X-TREME! Instead of being this mysterious figure that deals out justice where justice is due, he turned into the terminator choppin' heads whenever it seemed like the movie was moving along too slow. Granted I haven't seen all of the Zatoichi films, but this just seemed a bit too much.
There are more problems with the film than just the modernization. The movie is all over the place in the plot department. It starts off pretty routine with Ichi wandering into anew cityand finding it overrun with thugs. But then the movie just bounces all over the place. There are scenes that don't have anything to do with the movie, there are flashbacks that have no plot device to signal that you are actually watching a flashback and there a huge lulls in between the action that the film seems to want to focus on. In the middle of the movie they throw in two geishas who are avenging the deaths of their family, and of course, the town Ichi is residing in just happens to be the ho! me of the gang that killed their family. Zatoichi eventually decides to join the Geishas side and chop some fools.
The one thing Zatoichi has going for it is some truly bizarre humor which the crowd seemed to love and some kick-ass sword play. The film makers use a lot of CGI blood, which at first kind of put me off but later on I began to think it was pretty damn cool and unique. The use of CGI for blood almost gives the violence a sort of Anime-like quality. If you are into bloody swordfights then definitely check this movie out, because there is some good fight sequences. The nail in the coffin for me was the ending of the film. Instead of a really cool climactic battle sequences, which would have pushed the film into the likable category for me, they decide to end the movie with a fucking Riverdance-like tap number. I wish I were kidding. The last ten minutes of the movie is some Broadway tap number with some really annoying singing and down right stupid special effects. Most of the cast is included in the big dance number. I really don't know what the hell they were thinking, but it was awful.
I wanted to like this movie so much, but it had too much working against it. Like I said earlier, if you are into Japanese cinema and lots of blood, then check this movie out; I fall into this category, but I wouldn't see it again unless I had a fast forward button to skip half of the movie. Casual viewers of Japanese cinema should defiantly steer clear of this one.
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gwar
