Shin'ya Tsukamoto (left) and Sosuke Ikematsu (right) in Killing.Shin'ya Tsukamoto's Killing is a lean and mean—and not a little funny—chanbara with the spartan, Diy mise en scène common to this great gonzo director who shoots, edits, writes, and stars in the film. It spends its fleet runtime with a single idea in mind: to expose and break the conventions of the genre, pushing them to extremity. Set vaguely in the 19th century, it opens in a small village with a friendly masterless samurai, Mokunoshin Tsuzuki (Sosuke Ikematsu), living among the farmers and sparring with a local youth in a tranquility so bare that the main tension is the unfulfilled sexual desire between the swordsman and a local farmer’s daughter (Yu Aoi)—one of the first signs of Tsukamoto’s wry counter of expectations, unafraid to show the kind ronin furiously masturbating each night. Into this bare setting comes another masterless samurai,...
- 9/25/2018
- MUBI
One doesn’t have to indiscriminately love rogue samurai films to appreciate a well-made entry in the genre, but one does have to be an unabashed Shinya Tsukamoto devotee to find either excitement or pleasure in “Killing.” Less profligately violent than recent works like “Fires on the Plain” or “Kotoko,” the film is a minor entry in the cult director’s hefty oeuvre, set in the 19th century and featuring a skilled lone ronin finding himself unwilling to kill. Most notable for its oddly murky visuals and unimpressive fight sequences, this stripped-down outdoor chamber piece wraps up after 80 minutes and will just as quickly be forgotten.
Reticent ronin Mokunoshin Tsuzuki helps a village of rice farmers with the harvest. To keep nimble, he uses wooden poles to practice his swordsmanship skills with young Ichisuke (Ryusei Maeda), who worships the footloose samurai and dreams of an adventurous life away from the paddies.
Reticent ronin Mokunoshin Tsuzuki helps a village of rice farmers with the harvest. To keep nimble, he uses wooden poles to practice his swordsmanship skills with young Ichisuke (Ryusei Maeda), who worships the footloose samurai and dreams of an adventurous life away from the paddies.
- 9/7/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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