Samurai Assassin is a complicated story but easier to follow than director Okomoto's excellent Sword of Doom made a year later. While it is clear that the band of assassins is seeking revenge on an official for an earlier purge on the assassins' clans, we never learn about the original reasons for their enmity. Historically, the disagreements concerned relations with foreign countries who were seeking to open up Japan to trade, but this is never alluded to in the film. The driving forces of the story, and they are good ones, are Niino's (Mifune) ambition to achieve full samurai rank and the paranoia of the leaders of the assassin band. These two forces interact nicely as the plot unfolds. Eijiro Tono (the innkeeper who befriends Mifune in Yojimbo) does his usual terrific job as the merchant who helped raise Niino and tries to protect him from meeting a tragic fate. Highly recommended for samurai and Mifune fans.
Review of Samurai Assassin
