Audience Member
It's nice to see Shintaro play another samurai aside from Zatoichi even if it's a brute character. However the movie is a bust. It's quite dragging. Wasting the talents for Nakadai and Shintaro. Also the title of the movie is misleading as the story revolves only to Okada but there are Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Hideo Gosha has taken the classic gangster/mobster storyline and infused it with Japanese Chanbara flavor, and it's great. It feels like a film reminiscent of the work of Martin Scorcese but still showcasing the brilliant skills of Gosha such as gorgeous photography, beautiful imagery, and intense action. The performances are also stunning: Nakada is chilling and Katsu is just brilliant. Katsu's ability to work through his character's development is hugely impressive.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
Full Review
walter m
In "Hitokiri," it is 1862 and Izo Okada(Shintaro Katsu), a samurai, is so broke due to inactivity that he is contemplating selling his armor, his land and pretty much anything else that he can. But Takechi(Tatsuya Nakadai), head of Clan Tosa, informs him things about to get interesting. Even though he feels the samurai is too undisciplined to be a killer, he invites him to watch an assassination he has planned. Observing the act in progress, Okada feels he can kill for a living, too, and several months later, he is very successful at his chosen field but still spends most of his time in Kyoto with Onimo(Mitsuko Baisho), a cheap prostitute(her words, not mine). But his old friend Sakamato(Yujiro Ishihara) feels that not only can he do better but his whole country can than this continual internecine warfare between the various clans.
Beneath its brutally violent surface, occasionally going over the top(oh, that ending!), "Hitokiri" has plenty to say on the subject of friendship and loyalty, namely that it should run both ways. But even the graphic violence has a purpose, as David Cronenberg has put it, to point out the hideousness of the acts, rather than glorifying them.
(Originally reviewed in the blog section on July 10, 2008.)
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
" Vous saurez bientôt qui a tué Toyo Yoshida...
Toyo lui-même vous expliquera... dans l'au-delà . "
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
i really liked this film - the story, the camerawork, the performances - all brilliant. it's a about a samurai who, while highly skilled with a sword, lacks the brains and duplicity to survive in the waning days of the edo period in japan.
mishima yukio has a role in this as a feared samurai. and in an eerie foreshadowing of mishima's eventual fate, his character commits sepuku.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This brilliant classic is outrageously impossible to find! If you're one of the few blessed to see it, you'll be blown away. It's awesome; it belongs on the short list of great samurai films. Why no distributor has picked this up and remastered it (like the countless other so-so samurai films out there) is a frustrating mystery that will keep me up at night. Hideo Gosha deserves the same respect as Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Okamoto, etc. It's a damn shame.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
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