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100A masterpiece of wry violence and stylized mayhem, The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi turns loose one of Japan's most brilliant film auteurs, Takeshi Kitano, on one of its most enduring pop legends.
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90This roaring crowd-pleaser also boasts hilarious bits of business, insightful observations into the human condition, and geysers of kitschy computer-generated blood.
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90The summer's most rousing action picture.
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88The kind of film I more and more find myself seeking out, a film that seems alive in the sense that it appears to have free will; if, in the middle of a revenge tragedy, it feels like adding a suite for hoes and percussion, it does.
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88A boisterous and improbably entertaining action comedy.
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88If there's a larger theme in Zatoichi, it's that nobody is quite who he or she seems.
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88It's a top-notch action film, albeit on the bloody side, complete with decisive action, mysterious characters and a nobility and sense of purpose that allows its excesses to be forgiven.
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80As entertaining and surprising as the film is, however, nothing can prepare one for its rousing final fight scenes.
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80Although Zatoichi may disappoint some Kitano purists, who might think it a vanity piece or submission to popular taste -- he's even begun moving his camera -- its pyrotechnics are still audacious and breathtaking.
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80Kitano uses exaggerated acting, choreo-graphed violence and, most radically, the rhythms of everyday life -- farmers pounding the earth, the syncopated plop of falling rain -- to turn this genre story into a crypto-Kabuki play and one blissfully idiosyncratic diversion.
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80Like many musicals, The Blind Swordsman works better in individual scenes than as a whole. Mr. Kitano is not the most disciplined storyteller, and the plot meanders along tangents and stumbles into flashbacks, losing momentum for long stretches in the middle.
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80Over-plotted and at times incoherent but never dull, this is a stylishly designed, highly entertaining bloodbath full of offbeat comedy and inspired musical moments.
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80Kitano the filmmaker makes sure that everything is beautiful, from the wonderful colors and passing tableaux to the intricate fighting choreography. This blind swordsman, you realize, has vision to spare.
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78Beneath its layers of epic detail, this Zatôichi is cinematic cotton candy.
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75Kitano is a riveting spectacle. So's the movie.
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75Stylishly directed and smartly acted, especially by the filmmaker-star, who gives one of his best performances as the unerring swordsman.
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75Because Kitano also wrote and directed the movie, Zatoichi also features all kinds of beguiling, if admittedly bizarre, subplots and forays into nonsequitur territory.
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75The tap-dance finale is a gem.
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75Hyper-violent yet emotionally powerful.
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75It feels like one long non-sequitur -- like closing a Charles Bronson film with a disco medley -- but there's an emotional consistency to Kitano's boisterous celebration of movement.
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75The movie, quite simply, goes to sleep whenever Zatoichi isn't fighting. When he is, it's a pulp dazzler.
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75What really separates Zatoichi from a run-of-the-mill action pic is the sense of humor -- and even more than that, the sense of fun -- that Kitano brings to it.
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75More reinvention than remake, this black-humored, blood-soaked adventure is a colorful if impersonal audience pleaser done up in a showy, fluid style with a tongue-in-cheek flair.
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70Mixing all the liberal blood-letting with equal amounts of inspired comedy, Kitano puts a fresh face on the classic material without messing with its heart.
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70Like Ang Lee's "Hulk," it's a fusion of arthouse and multiplex instincts, and though it seems unlikely to satisfy anyone, it's just as unlikely that anyone who sees it will forget it soon.
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70A reasonably good Kurosawa pastiche. But overburdened with convoluted flashbacks and interpolated gags, and generally lacking a dynamic sense of cutting, the movie doesn't possess the master's sardonic brio.
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70A mix-and-match crowd-pleaser that shouldn't add up, but delightfully does.
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70Though the filmmaker has by now ridiculed the martial-arts drama virtually out of existence, the final dance number -- actually closer to festive stomping than tapping -- somehow manages to transcend irony, conveying instead only Kitano's childlike exhilaration, with a sense of ease regained.
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63This incarnation is funny, quirky and clever, with some mesmerizing action sequences.
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63I never did sort out the gangsters fighting for control of a 19th-century town, nor did I figure out exactly what happened to the main henchman. But I was rarely bored.
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60A bravura tap-dancing finale as exhilarating as it is bizarre.
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50The best part of Zatoichi is its fine sense of rhythm, culminating in a galvanizing clog-dance finish.
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50What saves Zatoichi is that it ends -- for no clear reason -- with a foot-stomping ensemble dance number that is both delightful and unhinging: It sends you home with spasmodic giggles, convinced this Japanese imp has discovered a new path to your unconscious.
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Positive: 13 out of 13
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Mixed: 0 out of 13
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Negative: 0 out of 13
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Riren10
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JamesM10Takeshi Kitano's masterpiece. You must see this film.