ZATOICHI ***

Ridiculously entertaining and extremely violent, just what you might expect from Takeshi Kitano in fact. "Zatoichi"I is a Samurai picture that owes something of a debt to Kurosawa but I doubt if Kurosawa would have had the tenacity to have made his super swordsman hero Zatoichi blind, as Kitano does here nor would he have introduced the themes of paedophilia and the suggestions of homosexuality nor end his film with a brilliantly choreographed dance sequence.
Kitano won the Best Director prize at Venice and deservedly so; pastiche has seldom felt so original or so much fun. As an actor, Kitano is a mite too laconic for his own good; he coasts through the movie but as a director he keeps things tight and he's a great story-teller. "Zattoichi"
is certainly one of his very best films.