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| Illustration by Josh Cochran |
This film I
had the pleasure of watching with a friend. And the displeasure of having
massive issues with the laptop and disc, where the final 5 minutes wouldn't
play. It took some time to see the last five minutes, roughly a week. And it
leads to a very disjointed feeling I have for the movie. But I'll talk about
that shortly, let us instead talk about the movie itself.
Ichi comes
across a dying man who seems to have been escorting a young woman, Omitsu.
Omitsu is played by Shiho Fujimura. Omitsu is the daughter of a wealthy
merchant, and in the course of spurning the advances with a too grabsy samurai,
stabs him with a hair pin. This goes badly, and thus, Ichi arrives to keep her
safe along the way.
This is
perhaps the most location heavy of the films I've seen so far. I mean that in
that Ichi doesn't stay in one place long, I don't think a set gets reused.
Point A, to Point B, to Point C, all the way down to killing a bunch of yakuza
and walking away into the sunset. There are set pieces of action along the way,
but nothing that stands out. Well, except the part where he throws a woman
around.
I'll
explain. Ohisa, played by Reiko Fujiwara, has been following Ichi around for
the movie, since the start of the film, were Ichi kills her husband, a Ronin.
She kidnaps Omitsu away from him and in turn loses her to a bunch of corrupt
bastards. Ichi doesn't take being tricked well, it's a bit of a soft for him,
and when he finds her, he tosses her around. I mean that in the, he pushes
here, and then scares the crap out of her. I don't recall any real harm done,
but it's kind of intense.
The final
conflict is interesting, where Ichi just goes through a lot of the motions,
dealing with waves of mooks, even taking a moment to draw water from a well to
take a drink. He cuts down the bad guys, sends the pretty Omitsu on her way to
find happiness elsewhere, and he walks into the sunset.
Even
watching the final few minutes of this movie, the video was bad, choppy. And
I'm not sure I caught everything. And while this isn't a bad movie, it ranks in
the middling area of, "I'd watch it again, but not really the one I'd want
to watch again." Side note, this is also the first time I've noticed a lot
of open eyes on the part of Shintaro Katsu, he looks as far up as possible, and
just barely opens his eyes, so all you can see is the whites. It creates for
some fantastic imagery, of very small eyes of pure white. You become afraid of
this man at times.
Next we have
Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold. From
what I hear it's one of the best of the franchise.
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