Zatôichi Review

Zatôichi is a good-natured homage to the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, and connects neatly with that cinematic sub-genre of the taciturn wanderer who is a master fighter. Kurosawa's Yojimbo featured the Man With No Name, who provided the model for Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy; the character Zatôichi (Kitano) conforms to a similar type, being known throughout simply as "the masseur". In fact, Zatôichi himself pre-dates Yojimbo - he's a well-known character from the books of Japanese author Kan Shimozawa, and was brought to life previously in film and on TV between 1962 and 1989.

The 70s also saw a long-running series of films and TV shows based on Kazuo Koike's 'Lone Wolf And Cub' manga, again about a wandering master swordsman. The Japanese have a real proclivity for this type of hero, though Zatôichi never made it the West, while Lone Wolf only became readily available in the bastardised form of the movie Shogun Assassin. Kitano, however, has sufficient following worldwide to make the character viable internationally. That said, this is no arthouse film - like so many that fall into that crude bracket, it's actually a populist film from a non-English language nation. It's amusing, features some great action, and is accessible - though at times it's confusing. Kitano (who wrote the screenplay, based on a Shimozawa story) has opted for a structure that casually moves in and out of flashback, nominally muddling matters.