Reviled to live everlastingly, previous samurai Manji (Kimura) sees a shot at recovery when he is enrolled by a youthful vagrant (Sugisaki) to chase down the man in charge of the demise of her folks.
Takashi Miike is productive. So productive he's most likely completed another motion picture when you read this sentence. He's a hundred films into a vocation that has served up fiercely different admission, from the hopeless chills of Audition to sick zombie melodic The Happiness Of The Katakuris, and ultra-vicious activity with Ichi The Killer. And keeping in mind that Blade Of The Immortal investigates an area Miike has entered before with Hara-Kari: Death Of A Samurai and 13 Assassins, when the strategy is this great, it's hard not to acclaim.
An expanded preface, shot in high contrast, acquaints us with Manji (Kimura), a disrespected and tormented samurai, securing his young sister Machi (Sugisaki) from rascals. Rapidly, however, Machi is dispatched, and a wrathful Manji ends up going head to head against a hundred sword-swinging warriors. It doesn't end well for him, yet it closes less well for them, in the first of a few flawlessly arranged broadened fights which finish with Miike pulling the camera back to indicate exactly what number of dead litter the ground. Upon his withering breath, Manji is given everlasting status by a strange old woman, and off we go, fluttering into shading and quick sending 50 years. Presently Manji collaborates with Rin (likewise played by Sugisaki), a stranded young lady who helps him to remember his dead sister, and sets off on a mission of reprisal.
As Manji hacks and slices his way through a progression of experiences with the men of wickedness warlord Anotsu (Fukushi), what could rapidly end up noticeably dull and redundant is charged impressively, not simply by Miike's reliably creative blocking and arranging, however by flawless changes to tradition.
A story that could some way or another be deplorably inauspicious is raised by snapshots of pitch-dark, strange amusingness, outstandingly in one grouping where Manji winds up going head to head against a kindred worm-ridden interminable. And after that there's the curiosity benefit of having an unkillable legend who can in any case take a licking amid battle, with Kimura perfectly offering the inexhaustible Manji's distress as he's more than once cut, wounded and speared.
The budding relationship between Rin and Manji is nicely calibrated, with the duo’s philosophies and goals changing along the way, but it’s the action which will attract many. At 57, Miike is now officially an old stager, working in an arena where younger bucks such as The Raid’s Gareth Evans, John Wick’s Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, and The Villainess’ Byung-gil Jung are rewriting the rulebook. But as with George Miller before him with Mad Max: Fury Road, his action scenes have never felt more fresh or vital. Miike ensures that each bout feels different from the one that preceded it by switching up the settings and the styles of the assassins.
This is not a film that skimps on the claret — action fans will have a field day, but gorehounds will have a field year, as Miike lops off arms, slices throats, and slashes out eyes. Or as he likes to think of it, just another Wednesday.
Stylish, soaked in gore, and unconventional, it’s another winner from Miike. Here’s to the next hundred. At his current rate, that should be in 2025.