Takashi Miike’s samurai slasher has both elegiac and witty moments but the gore does tend to bore…It is telling when you are barely 30 minutes into a film and you are already inured to the sight of severed limbs,thudding wetly on to the blood-sodden soil as swords whizz above like helicopter rotors. The latest picture from the prolific Japanese genre director Takashi Miike, Blade of the Immortal is an eye-wateringly violent tale of revenge set in a time when samurai roam the country.
It’s a stylish slash fest, and which delivers visceral thrills along with quietly striking moments of beauty. I was struck by an exquisite shot in which Manji (Takuya Kimura),the reluctantly immortal warrior, stands amid hundreds of slain warriors while a curlicue of smoke wafts in the foreground and a bird’s song breaks through the deathly silence.
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Source: guardian.co.uk