The Sword of Doom
The DVD I watched of this was not very good quality and it appeared as a very small box in the middle of the screen which bothered me at first but I was soon swept up into the story and stopped noticing it.
This film follows a taciturn samurai who kills a lot of people. I've seen him described as evil and amoral but I'm not sure that he is, he seems to have a different moral code to others but there's a certain code there nonetheless. For example, he kills the old man at the beginning which seems cruel, but the old man has just prayed for death. He has a conversation with the wife of the man he is due to fight in which she makes it clear she would give up honour for family which she sees as the right thing and he sees as the wrong thing. He's not often cruel for the sake of it, just because he really doesn't care about other people at all in a sociopath kind of way. Almost without meaning to he causes anger, violence and wrongdoing in others by his sheer infuriating, immovable presence.
I was really drawn into this at the start, but when it started with time/place jumps and historical organisational stuff rather than human folly it becomes less interesting. The ending was interesting, but annoying in that it didn't really wind up any of the subplots. If it had focused purely on Ryonosuke, it would have made more sense as his ending but we get to see other characters throughout the film and not find out what happens to them, like Omatsu, the granddaughter.
Sometimes there were bits that now look very dated and silly, such as sudden close-ups accompanied by sudden dramatic music, or when Ryonosuke and Ohama are at the mill and we get a shot of pounding machinery to indicate sex, I did laugh a bit. However, there are also some undeniably cool looking moments and well thought-out framing. I especially liked all of the scenes in the rain and snow.