The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi: Tap-dancing samurai show a sense of
humor
By Laura Kelly
Staff Writer
Posted August 20 2004
Some folks may catch the remake of The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi for
its samurai slice-and-dice fighting. A few may go, God help them,
because they liked Tom Cruise's tired exercise in emotional
manipulation, The Last Samurai. These people do not know what they're
in for.
They'll get their swooshing swords and their copious blood. But
they'll be scratching their heads at Zatoichi's sudden bursts of
slapstick humor, or when the entire cast partakes in a thunderous tap
dance.
Could be that only those folks going to see a film by the awesome
Japanese talent "Beat" Takeshi Kitano will be content with this new
version of the famous Japanese hero. Kitano audaciously takes on the
celluloid persona of the blind, justice-seeking swordsman created in
the 1960s and played for decades by Shintaro Katsu.
Zatoichi's story is taken from the very first Katsu film in the
1960s, about warring factions in a small town. The blind swordsman
(played by Kitano) comes to town as a humble masseur and gambler,
biding his time with the dice-playing nephew of the woman who takes
him in. Soon, he's in the middle of a gang war.
In Kitano's samurai universe we're given wonderfully flawed and
dimensional characters. The film is populated with bums and
prostitutes, guys who hurt themselves because they don't know how to
hold a sword, put-upon working-class folks, and an idiot or two.
Kitano has the odd ability to appeal to both the art-film lover and
the action-film fan (though not all of his films are gangster
flicks). He allows bullets to fly and blood to spurt in the midst of
silly humor, solid storytelling and stunningly beautiful visuals.
Like blind Zatoichi's sword sheathed in a rickety old cane, Kitano
shows us the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary. His Zatoichi
is no ordinary samurai story.
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