cadre of crusty bandits cruelly mocks a blind wanderer (Kitano) by enlisting a small child to pilfer his staff and leave him defenseless. The boy dutifully absconds with the walking stick, and the thieves ridicule the seemingly frail old man, waving his crutch in front of his face and insulting him with a barrage of humiliating jibes.
Suddenly, the old man grabs the loose end of his staff, retrieves the samurai blade hidden inside and kills one of the tormentors with one swift, graceful movement. The remaining would-be bullies turn tail and flee, leaving the old man standing alone in the road, with but the first of many bodies he will soon leave in his virtuous wake.
Zatoichi is a frail old man with the reflexes of a warrior, the mind of a philosopher and the heart of a Samaritan. His life has been dedicated to the modest and honorable practice of defending those who cannot defend themselves, and stumbling upon this small, corrupt border town, Zatoichi discovers that his virtually superhuman talents are in more dire need than ever before.
Confronting a series of more and more formidable opponents, including a ronin (Tadanobu Asano) whose abilities rival his own, Zatoichi finds that his honorable path may soon be stained with his own blood—and the blood of those whose lives he's claimed.
Justice is a bloody business
When Japanese auteur "Beat" Takeshi Kitano inherited Shintaro Katsu's internationally beloved character Zatoichi and scheduled him for a cinematic makeover, few could have expected the unconventional approach the revered filmmaker would take with the iconic material. Rather than merely recounting Zatoichi's days and nights as a warrior masquerading as a feeble senior citizen, Kitano reinvents the character in a completely new environment, somehow combining elements of Kurosawa, Chinese opera and Lars von Trier-style verite musical into one unruly but wholly compelling entity.
After his last film, the obtuse and virtually unwatchable Dolls, Kitano makes a proud return to form that almost registers as a straightforward narrative, but manages to incorporate the above elements in such an invigorating manner that your eyes will be riveted to the screen. Throughout the film, the action sequences are downplayed almost to the point of nonexistence, which seems odd for a story about a samurai, while the human drama—between Zatoichi and the townspeople and iron-fisted gangsters—is examined more with a sense of whimsy than attention to some emotional minutiae.
As a result, the violence becomes more and more shocking (without necessarily becoming more graphic or intense) and provides a sort of cathartic release for the viewer, who is kept in edge-of-the-seat anticipation for much of the film's 115-minute running time.
While Zatoichi hardly contains the balletic display of action that made movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Iron Monkey such huge international hits, its frequently bizarre approach works just as effectively; the closing musical number, like much of the content that came before, arrives seemingly out of left field, but it's a detour from conventional filmmaking that most of the film's target audiences should welcome.
