Love and Honor (Bushi no ichibun)

• Tickets

Movie Details

• Genre: Drama, Romance
• Release Date: 2007-11-02 NY/LA
• Running Time: 121 min.
• Director: Yôji Yamada
• Cast: Takuya Kimura, Rei Dan, Mitsugoro Bando, Takashi Sasano, Kaori Momoi, Nenji Kobayashi, Ken Ogata, Makoto Akatsuka, Toshiki Ayata, Yasuo Daichi
• Producer: Hiroshi Fukazawa
• Writer: Shuuhei Fujisawa, Yôji Yamada
• Distributor: The Bigger Picture
• Official Site: Love and Honor (Bushi no ichibun) Official Site

At 76, Japanese writer-director Yoji Yamada is still best known in his homeland for a one-time Guinness Book record-holding series of four dozen films (the Tora-san series), all with virtually the same plot about a traveling salesman who is unlucky in love. That resolute consistency carries over to Love and Honor, the third in Yamada’s melodramatic samurai trilogy (following the Oscar-nominated The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade). Here again are the familiar feudal class themes and low-ranking samurai protagonist. Newly appointed to be a food tester for a local lord, Shinnojo (Takuya Kimura) eats an out-of-season shellfish and goes blind. Shinnojo falls into suicidal despair until a chance to exact revenge upon a head clerk who has bedded his wife leads to the trilogy’s third mano-a-mano showdown. If you’ve seen the others, you’ll know not to expect Zatoichi action in this blind man’s duel. Yamada’s refined Merchant-Ivory approach to the Edo era (slow pace, genteel storytelling, restrained aesthetics) produces more yawning than fawning. At least the guy’s dependable.