Love and Honor

The third and final chapter in director Yoshi Yamada’s revisionist samurai trilogy, begun in 2003 with the Oscar-nominated The Twilight Samurai and continued the following year with The Hidden Blade, doesn’t quite deliver the punch of its predecessors, though it’s not without a solid punch of its own, bringing poignant thematic closure to Yamada’s bold reinvention of what had been one of the most entrenched and time-honored genres in film history. An extremely limited release by micro-distributor Eleven Arts won’t likely reach beyond a small core audience of Japanese cinema buffs, though good reviews and solid word of mouth should help stir broader support for the eventual DVD release.

As in The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, Yamada here seeks to redefine the feudal samurai in human terms, warriors more beset with human problems than possessed of superhuman killing skills. Takuya Kimura stars as Shinnojo, an honored poison taster for the shogun who falls ill after digesting a badly prepared, out-of-season shellfish. When he wakes, the toxins have taken their toll, leaving him almost entirely blind. Fearful that his loss of position will put them both out on the street, Shinnojo’s beloved wife Kayo (Rei Dan) follows her family’s advice and seeks the help of a top shogun advisor (Mitsugoro Bando), who promises to see to Shinnojo’s welfare—for a price.

"It's an exquisitely crafted melodrama, moving with stately grace toward an understated yet forceful quest for revenge." (Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times)