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Audio Format:DD 2.0
Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1
Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: English, Chinese
Region Code: ALL
Year Made: 2006
Running Time: 122
Release Date: 09/10/2007
Takuya Kimura stars in the third and final samurai film in "Tasogare no Seibei" and "Kakushi Ken Oni no Tsume" director Yoji Yamada's samurai trilogy! This story of married love and sword-drawn vengeance has already gained rave reviews as Yamada's top masterpiece, and now it's coming home to DVD.
But Yamada's trilogy of samurai films -- "Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai)" (2002), "Kakushi Ken -- Oni no Tsume (The Hidden Blade)" (2004), and the new "Bushi no Ichibun (Love and Honor)" (2006) -- differ from much of his earlier work not only in subject matter but treatment and sensibility. The folksy humor and sentimentality that were once Yamada trademarks are seldom in sight. Instead, the dominant mood is autumnal, verging on somber; the stylistics spare, if visually rich.
If Yamada was once a sort of Japanese Norman Rockwell, giving the big audience warm tinglies with his idealized, portraits of national archetypes, he has since become more like Andrew Wyeth: still popular with the masses, but striking deeper, darker emotional chords.
Based, like the first two films in the trilogy, on the fiction of Shuhei Fujisawa, "Bushi no Ichibun" also resembles them in its story arc. Once again, a low-ranked samurai faces character-testing difficulties that he overcomes with the support of a pure-hearted woman, culminating in a sword duel with a rival. In other words, a third serving of soba.
But just as one bowl of noodles is not like the next, "Bushi no Ichibun" stands apart from the other trilogy films. First, its star, Takuya Kimura, is not, like Hiroyuki Sanada of "Tasogare Seibei" and Masatoshi Nagase of "Kakushi Ken," a middle-aged screen veteran, but a youngish TV megastar with limited film experience. Rei Dan, who plays Kimura's wife, is a screen newcomer, in contrast to Rie Miyazawa and Takako Matsu, established stars who played the female leads in the first two films.
Also, the situation of Kimura's samurai, Shinnojo Mimura, is more dramatically desperate. A food taster for his clan's lord, he is poisoned by bad shellfish and goes blind. Though poor by samurai standards, Shinnojo and his wife Kayo (Dan) have a happy marriage, and his career prospects as an expert swordsman are bright until suddenly it all goes crash.
Kayo and the couple's elderly servant Tokuhei (Takashi Sasano) remain devoted, but Shinnojo feels worse than useless. He contemplates suicide, and turns bitter and violent. Kayo, an orphan who married up, can bring no allies to this struggle. Meanwhile, Shinnojo's relatives, beginning with his aunt Ine (Kaori Momoi), are selfish, coldly practical sorts who, at a family conference, tell Kayo to find a powerful patron. She remembers Toya Shimada (Mitsugoro Bando), a clan banto (captain) who had once expressed sympathy for her plight.
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