Cheap Zatoichi /Sonatine Double Bill (DVD) (Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Yui Natsukawa) (Takeshi Kitano) Price

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Customer Reviews of Zatoichi /Sonatine Double Bill

Stick that up yer arthouse
Blending period drama, Shogun Assassin-style ultra-violence, comedy and Stomp-esque musical interludes, Takeshi Kitano's "Zatoichi" is probably the most audacious film to have come out of Japan so far this decade. Kitano - a former comedian who divides his time between gameshow appearances and producing violent gangster flicks - plays the eponymous hero, a blind but deadly samurai who gets off on gambling, chopping wood and putting wrongs to right. It's a masterful turn, and one that Kitano clearly relishes, twitching and chuckling to himself before dispatching enemies with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of his blade.
The plot centres around Zatoichi's battle against the local yakuza and their formidable samurai-for-hire (Ichi the Killer's Tadonabu Asano). There are showdowns aplenty and, when they do come, they're nothing if not spectacular. Digitally-enhanced, cartoony and extremely violent (think: severed limbs and gallons of blood aplenty), the fights are likely to polarise audiences almost as much as the film's climactic, er, tapdance sequence.
In between, we get a revenge drama involving a cross-dressing geisha, a wannabe samurai who charges around wearing little but armour and what looks like a nappy, slapstick galore and numerous musical interludes. In a similar vein to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, Kitano draws his soundtrack from ambient noises - as Zatoichi wanders, sightless, through the fields, the sounds of workers' hoes builds up into a natural rhythm. It's a cute effect, and one that's deftly employed here, compounding the sense that Zatoichi - though blind - is catching something that everyone around him misses.
What impresses most is how Kitano manages to draw such unlikely elements together and, moreover, make them work so well. I can think of few directors capable of flitting from slapstick to bloodbath, or domestic tragedy to musical setpiece, as convincingly or effortlessly. Even the aforementioned tapdance number, and a lengthy flashback/musical piece midway through, make a curious kind of sense on a second viewing.
Being a Japanese-language film, this one will inevitably get only a limited audience. Those who do make the effort, however, are in for a treat. It wouldn't be overstating the case to say that you've never seen anything quite like this before.

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Zatoichi - visually dazzling and aurally sophisticated...
The blind ronin Zatoichi wanders from town to town where he makes his living giving massages and spends his leisure gambling. Often Zatoichi is perceived as a blind helpless victim, but make no mistake here as he is the deadliest of all swordsmen. In this adventure, Zatoichi enters a small town besieged by two rival gangs that are fighting for control. When Zatoichi enters the town a mighty ronin arrives simultaneously looking for a good paying job that can help finance the cure for his sick wife. Also, two murderous geishas arrive and infiltrate the underworld with death in their minds. Zatoichi ends up in the middle of this ordeal where he functions as the evenhanded police, judge, and executioner for the town's villains by delivering death to those who does wrong. Zatoichi is visually dazzling and aurally sophisticated as it enhances the understanding for the dark world which Zatoichi experiences daily. This results in a fantastic adventure where right and wrong are well balanced under the blind eye of Zatoichi, leaving the audience with a good cinematic experience.