mevmijaumau Zatoichi the Outlaw (not really the first time he was an outlaw) is different than its predecessors for a few reasons. First, it's the only Zatoichi film directed by Satsuo Yamamoto, a director noted for his anti-authoritarian films (and indeed, there's a political side to this one as well). It also has a new screen writing staff and it's the first film produced by Shintaro Katsu's own company, Katsu Productions.Stylistically, this movie is a bit more rough compared to its predecessors. While the pittoresque, colorful images of feudal Japan are still here, the sword-fights are bloodier. Limbs and heads are hacked off, women are raped. Zatoichi makes some truly horrible life choices that profoundly affect the lives of a nearby family, and he's never really sure whom to trust in this movie. The pacing is also unusual, making the film take place across a whole year instead of a few weeks max. Two notable actors also make an appearance; Rentaro Mikuni and Ko Nishimura.The film's highlight: Zatoichi kills a moth by throwing a toothpick at him, the stabbed moth landing on a bad guy's face.

fdevos6 So far I have watched all 15 of the Zatoichi movies preceding Zatoichi the Outlaw and this title surprised me the most. Zatoich the Outlaw still uses the 'tried and tested' formula of a typical Zatoichi movie with a few subtle changes that gives this film a fresh take on the franchise.This is largely thanks to the fact that this is the first film done by the Katsu Production Co. The few subtle changes I referred to was firstly brought on by the use of plot devices such as the flow of time to help demonstrate how the true nature of man can change with time.Secondly, the movie gives a short glimpse of Zatoichis' life as a masseur in a mountain-side village. This part of the movie was my favorite part as it depicts Zatoichi as a lone drifter that tries to fit in a village of people that recognizes him as someone special, an outsider. His dealings with fellow blind massuers'(anma); rich-folk and a beautiful girl sums him up nicely as an individual in these few short scenes.This film also didn't shy away when it came to violence. Severed limbs and blood abound demonstrates Zatoichis' deadly swordmanship. In many of the previous films it felt like he was merely hitting his opponents with a stick as there was hardly any evidence of fatal injuries and such.The cinematography is top-notch,the Katsu Production Co. went all out: Picturesque Japanese landscapes; tons of extras dressed up in the appropriate period attire and vibrant colors never before seen in a Zatoichi film. The actors did a stellar job, Rentarô Mikuni that played Asagoro deserves special credit for his truly versatile ability to depicts both sides of human cruelty. The Katsu Production Co. obviously avoided using the same actors that circulated through the series,some actors have played as 5 different characters in the previous films! I was quite surprised when I saw some of the IMDb user reviews writing the film up as the first let down in the long-running series. To the contrary, this film in my opinion is one of the best so far.

Ersbel Oraph The whole series is impressive. Yet this is way lower in quality. As another reviewer compared it with the Tarantino junk, well, for those there isn't any drop in quality.I'd say it's impressive to keep such a long series till the first movie of a lesser value. This is the first one with a complicated to shady story line and at this point they try (why?) to experiment with a different kind of cinematography. And while the dynamic scenes are a bit weird, things like the beheading are way out of their league... It's more inexplicable as the series so far was good enough skipping gore and close-ups.Also, there is no need to relate this series with Kurosawa. Kurosawa, a samurai descendant, made movies about the life and honor of the important people. People who went for the art and not for the craft. Zatoichi is made by actor descendants (quite at the opposite side of the social scale) and it's about life and death and less about the craft. One is telling the stories from above the peasant class, in a contemplative manner and the other is telling them from the back streets somehow looking up to the stability of the peasant life.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

galensaysyes If this had been done earlier in the Zatoichi series it could have been one of the best. It is good enough, as most of them are, but the plot and the characters seem too complicated for the series at this point. The situation is unusually intriguing: the farmers in the province have two champions, a benevolent boss (for once) and a philosopher-samurai who starts a sort of Grange; both run afoul of the usual local gangsters, who want the crops to fail because it increases their gambling revenues and their chances to snap up some land; their chief or powerful ally is a seeming puritan who is death on drinking and gambling but secretly indulges his own perverse appetites. (He also resembles Dracula, as the villains in the later Zatoichi movies tend increasingly to do.) These characters have enough meaning so that they deserved to be set against Zatoichi as he was drawn originally, but by now he has lost many of his nuances, and the changes in some of the characters, such as the good boss and the angry sister of a man Zatoichi has killed, need more time then the movie has to give, so that the story seems choppy, as if some scenes were missing. Other than that, the movie shows the virtues of most of the others in the series: good acting, sometimes lyrical photography, the creation of a vivid, believable, and uniquely recognizable landscape (the absence of which is obvious in the occasional episode where the director just misses it), and a technical quality that of its nature disguises itself: the imaginatively varied use of limited sets so their limitations seem not to exist. And of course there is the keynote actor, whose presence, as much as his performance, makes it all work. This must be one of the best-sustained series in movie history.