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Samurai Assassin Director: Kihachi Okamoto Number of Items: 1 Format: Color Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: AnimEigo Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-02-08 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 "The Best." This is it. This is the movie that launched Mifune Toshiro into Japanese "Hollywood," so to speak. What can I say? this movie is one of the best for its time. I saw this on the I-channel a few weeks ago. I've been looking for it ever since. If you like classic B&W samurai films, then this is YOUR kind of movie "Ronin joins assassination attempt to regain honor" Mifune stars in this telling of an historical event -an assassination plot against a high government official in the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate. Mifune protrays an outcast ronin, unacknowledged son of a high official, who attempts to win riches via participation in the plot. Flashing swords and plenty of human pathos highlighted by artisticly framed B&W photography. "A powerful film with very contemporary themes" The film, set in the mid-1800's plays out a Greek tragedy through a Japanese lens. The film's basic story of a young man who is denied knowledge of his father's identity, rebels by joining a gang (of ronin), murders his best friend in order to maintain the trust of the gang leader, and ends up, unknowingly, committing one of the most horrific of crimes is amazingly contemporary. The ending is bloody, but the imagined aftermath is more powerful than any fight scene. Mifume and co-stars are excellent. This is a film I could have imagined Mifume and Kurosawa collaborating on.