| Comment: | I don’t think this movie is as good as older Zatoichi movies. The director made a fatal mistake of introducing a very long and boring interlude, the purpose of which, one can only assume, was to give us a much more detailed historical background to the current events, making the film richer and even more thrilling and exciting as a result.
But those “back to the past” intermissions hardly ever do any film any favours and, in this particular case, totally disturb the rhythm of the whole movie.
One starts to enjoy Zatoichi and get fully into swing of action only to find oneself immersed in some “boring old past” story which keeps dragging on and on and there is a real temptation to just switch the whole damn thing off. This side story drags on for so long that the viewer never recovers fully, even when the film returns back to the heart of slashing action. And even when I finally realized that we are back to the present, I couldn’t enjoy the film fully because every scene represented a threat, a danger , an opportunity for a director to dive into Past again. I guess my feelings in this respect are very much similar to those when watching any of “Christmas Specials” – just a lot of different pasts strung together with non-existent action. And I hate Christmas and, especially, Christmas Specials. There is enough action in Zatoichi to last a whole film. Unfortunately this action is overshadowed and dwarfed by the copious amounts of unnecessary non-action. |
