Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)

directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Japan

115 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I revisited this movie after about two years because I wanted to see if it was truly as mid as I remembered it being. Everybody I've talked to about it agrees: it's good, but it's just good. I really don't want this movie to be "just good", because it has literally everything I could ever want out of a chanbara film: Zatoichi? And Yojimbo? Directed by Kihachi Okamoto? Co-starring Shin Kishida as a goth yakuza with a pistol? Soundtrack by Akira Ifukube? How in the world could all of that combine into something even remotely less than awesome?

Well, I will say one thing: no matter how so-so the bulk of the film is, those last fifteen minutes absolutely whip.

Ichi journeys homeward, to a village on the outskirts of his hometown, but finds that since the last time he'd visited, it's been taken over by yakuza, and the townspeople are suffering for it. He's hoping to relax a little, especially after a tumultuous fight that opens the film, but the town has changed so much that none of the tranquility he remembers remains. Thrown into the mix is a character instantly recognizable (although they never say that it's him, the implication is fairly obvious): a scruffy, drunk ronin played by Toshirō Mifune. And a fairly complicated subplot about hidden gold.

I have a theory that there's two major reasons why this movie didn't turn out as good as it could have. The first is that it rests too heavily on the interplay between Katsu and Mifune's characters. I actually don't see this as an objective problem, because personally, over the past two years, I've seen a shipload of films starring both actors, and I was very entertained watching them play off of each other here. Is that enough to carry an entire film? I don't think so, unless you are specifically watching it for either of these two. I also think that, despite the title making it clear that, yes, they are putting Mifune in this on purpose and they want you to think of his character from Yojimbo, the ronin is far meaner than Sanjuro ever was. I do kind of love it - his wheedling senseiiii!! as he mocks one of his lackeys is, though cruel, really funny - but it feels like too-clever marketing to do all of this and then make the bodyguard in question a different character from who you're thinking of.

The second reason why I think this fell short is because they didn't let Okamoto do the Okamoto thing. I don't know anything about the production history of this film, or of the Zatoichi series in general, but I was getting a sense that Okamoto had maybe been told to tone down his usual wildness a little bit so that his entry wouldn't be the proverbial sore thumb of the franchise. So instead of two hours of antics and shenanigans à la Red Lion, we get two hours of talking capped by fifteen glorious minutes where Okamoto is finally loosed upon the production.

If you've seen a lot of his films, you can instantly recognize a battle scene from an Okamoto movie. It doesn't matter whether he's directing a war film or a swordfight in a jidaigeki, all of his climactic battles have the same disorganized, chaotic, brutal, bloody choreography. Nothing is pretty or practiced: limbs fly off, people die with no dignity whatever. Okamoto witnessed combat during the Pacific War and he films his battle scenes with a kind of frenetic violence that can be uncomfortable to watch. That is present during the climax of Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, and the stylistic choice is also paired with a pathos that had been building since the beginning of the film: the hidden gold is finally uncovered, in the form of dust secreted inside Jizo statues, and the fight occurs as high winds kick up, so the town is literally suffuse with the gold: the yakuza, the town youths, Ichi, and Sasa are all fighting while physically covered in the thing they're fighting for, which is impermanent, blowing away with the wind, ultimately useless. The futility of violence is on full display, and although Ichi may not be a party to greed the way the other characters are, he is still part of the fight.

I also think, because I managed to see a print of this that was one of the clearest, crispest film-watching experiences I've ever had, this is an extremely well-shot movie. The lighting is really unique. Every shot has this Caravaggio quality to it, with the extreme darks and stark lights side-by-side. It's genuinely beautiful for every second of the film. The physicality of the run-down town that the film takes place in is also impressive: I particularly liked one shot where Ichi is tackling a four-story staircase, and the scene is filmed from outside the house, so you see Ichi going up the stairs through the open windows. And the Ifukube score sounds like all of his other scores - which is to say, fantastic.

I've given this an extremely subjective four stars because it's got everybody I like in it and the climax is so good it makes me sweat. But you do have to sit through about an hour and forty minutes of actors who you may or may not be a fan of to get to it. It's ironic that despite much of Okamoto's typical directorial quirks being removed from the equation, this unusually lengthy entry in the Zatoichi series still feels different - not entirely in a good way - from the others.