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| Illustration by Paul Pope |
The Tale
of Zatoichi Continues stars Shintaro Katsu. While he still performs quite well in this story, he
is left with little of the humor of the previous film, and gets all the dark
dramatic scenes. The samurai that is the main fight of the film is Yoshiro,
played by Shintaro's elder brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama (credited as Jo
Kenzaburo). These two have a fair more antagonistic relationship which is the
core of the film, though not much honestly happens in this movie.
The plot is pretty straight forward, It's one year after the events of the first film and Ichi is returning to the shrine to show respect to fallen friend/samurai Hirate. He manages to get people wanting to kill him along the way, and even brings back the surviving members of the Yakuza from the last movie, so he can kill them off too. The action starts pretty early on, so instead of the first films 40 or so buildup of telling us how awesome a swords man Ichi is, we see it in 5. This movie is far more heavy on the action, less on the plot.
Otane returns for a few scenes where she serves no purpose other than to remind everyone she is a character in this world. She's getting married and while she is still in love with Ichi (for some reason) is willing to move on. Another female character who apparently falls in love with Ichi is Osetsu, a woman whose company can be purchased. She serves as a vehicle for Ichi and Yoshiro to talk about the woman they both were in love with long ago.
The fight scenes are better this time around, except for a small segment of what took me four re-watches to figure out what happened. The film is directed by Kazuo Mori, and written by him as well.
I'd equate this to Quantum of Solace, it continues the previous film, is pacier, more action packed, but lacks some of the depth and character of its predecessor. It's probably not the worst movie in the series, but it's not the best either. Happily snuggled where it is, and certainly good enough to warrant wanting to watch the next film in the franchise.
Next up is The New Tale of Zatoichi which sounds like a reboot already...
The plot is pretty straight forward, It's one year after the events of the first film and Ichi is returning to the shrine to show respect to fallen friend/samurai Hirate. He manages to get people wanting to kill him along the way, and even brings back the surviving members of the Yakuza from the last movie, so he can kill them off too. The action starts pretty early on, so instead of the first films 40 or so buildup of telling us how awesome a swords man Ichi is, we see it in 5. This movie is far more heavy on the action, less on the plot.
Otane returns for a few scenes where she serves no purpose other than to remind everyone she is a character in this world. She's getting married and while she is still in love with Ichi (for some reason) is willing to move on. Another female character who apparently falls in love with Ichi is Osetsu, a woman whose company can be purchased. She serves as a vehicle for Ichi and Yoshiro to talk about the woman they both were in love with long ago.
The fight scenes are better this time around, except for a small segment of what took me four re-watches to figure out what happened. The film is directed by Kazuo Mori, and written by him as well.
I'd equate this to Quantum of Solace, it continues the previous film, is pacier, more action packed, but lacks some of the depth and character of its predecessor. It's probably not the worst movie in the series, but it's not the best either. Happily snuggled where it is, and certainly good enough to warrant wanting to watch the next film in the franchise.
Next up is The New Tale of Zatoichi which sounds like a reboot already...
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