The Sword of Doom (1966)
My rating: 6/10
The parts that are a character piece about an utterly evil bastard who kills frequently and seemingly without remorse, until something inside him breaks and he goes on a final, deadly, and quite well-choreographed rampage, haunted by the many innocent lives he took, are quite good - there's some great atmosphere, and Tatsuya Nakadai is the broodingest brooder that ever brooded - but like many period pieces, this is framed inside a sociopolitical context full of intrigue that I couldn't quite bring myself to care about, and the ending is very abrupt and a bit unsatisfying.
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How tragic that man can never realize how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death.
Screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto (April 18, 1918 -- July 19, 2018) was one of Akira Kurosawa’s least-known collaborators, if only because he was not part of the director’s photogenic actors. But Hashimoto was more than just a Kurosawa collaborator. The screenwriter was raised in the Japanese countryside and was discharged from military service in World War II because of tuberculosis -- forcing him to spend four years in a veterans’ hospital. A fellow patient one day handed Hashimoto a magazine on cinema and, poring through the contents, it was then Hashimoto decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. He sent a screenplay to Mansaku Itami (a major figure of 1930s Japanese cinema, but whose films have largely not been distributed to the West), who was so impressed that he became the young Hashimoto’s mentor until his death in 1946.
Rashômon was Hashimoto’s screenwriting debut (and what a hell of a debut). Over the next several decades, Hashimoto’s films -- regardless of the director or actors involved -- would explore humanity from its most altruistic to its most unconscionable moments of cruelty. Hashimoto retired in 1982, having been with Toho Company for almost the entirety of his career. He passed away at a hundred years old in July -- the last of Kurosawa’s regular screenwriters living, and arguably the dean of that entire group.
Nine of his films are pictured above (left-right, descending):
Rashômon (1950) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki
Ikiru (1952) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Takashi Shimura, Shin’ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki, Miki Odagiri, and Bokuzen Hidari
Seven Samurai (1954) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Katô, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Bokuzen Hidari
I Live in Fear (1955) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki
Throne of Blood (1957) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo, Hiroshi Tachikawa, and Minoru Chiaki
Harakiri (1963) -- directed by Masaki Kobayashi; also starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentarô Mikuni, Shima Iwashita, Akira Ishihama, and Yoshio Inaba
The Sword of Doom (1966) -- directed by Kihachi Okamoto; also starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Yûzô Kayama, Michiyo Aratama, and Toshirô Mifune
Dodes’ka-den (1970) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura, Shinsuke Minami, and Yûkô Kusunoki
Hakkodasan (1977) -- directed by Shirô Moritani; also starring Shôgo Shimada, Ken Takakura, Hideji Ôtaki, Kin'ya Kitaôji, Tetsurô Tanba, Rentarô Mikuni, Komaki Kurihara, Akira Hamada, Mariko Kaga, and Yûzô Kayama
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The Sword of Doom (1966) (Votes: 7878, rating: 8.0)
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Through his unconscionable actions against others, a sociopath samurai builds a trail of vendettas that follow him closely.
Director: Kihachi Okamoto
Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama, Yûzô Kayama, Yôko Naitô
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