Samurai Wolf

This is one of the classics of 60's samurai cinema. Clocking in at a sparse 85 minutes, this work by acclaimed director Gosha Hideo takes all the established conventions of the genre and distills it to its bare essentials, producing an intense and exciting action film. A ronin (masterless samurai) named Kiba Okaminosuke (played by Natsuyagi Isao), arrives at a resort town at the foot of the mountains, with no money but a lot of gumption, as he manages to secure a meal and the company of a prostitute. A horse carrying two bodies enters the town, and the villagers identify them as fellow men who had been on assignment as messengers. The town lies at a key transportation point to deliver messages or products to the capitol. A blind woman heads the town and the delivery operation, and there is a rival faction from outside who seeks to control the entire shipping business, eliminating the competition by disrupting transport or killing the messengers. A few members of that group are in town and confront them, but Kiba interferes. A royal official interrupts a potential confrontation, and after the outside gang leaves, offers the blind woman a job she can't refuse: a delivery of 30,000 ryo is coming, and that they would like her to provide transport. She accepts. She explains to Kiba their situation, and that they need his help to make the mission a success, and he accepts. Meanwhile, the rival gang hires their own samurai (played by Uchida Ryohei), to kill Kiba. We discover that everyone has a checkered past, or are related to each other in some way. Only Kiba is the true outsider, and he steadily eliminates the gang members one by one as they try to kill him. The shipment arrives, and the delivery commences, with plans to deceive the enemy, but they are attacked. In the battle the cargo is exposed and it is discovered that they were transporting rocks. It was all a diversion. Many on both sides are killed, and the rival gang destroyed. Kiba confronts Uchida, who makes a claim on the village head - she was Uchida's wife. They fight each other and Uchida is killed. The blind woman returns to town, and Kiba wanders off into the country.

What makes this stand out so much are the stylized action and the attitude, which was similar to Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, which were made at the same time as this (1966). It's hard to say who influenced whom, but regardless, it reflected a new attitude towards standard genre films that were growing stale. Gosha Hideo, in his fourth film, had by this point made the successful transition from television to film, and had begun to produce works that redefined the genre, culminating in masterworks like Tenchu, Goyokin, Bandits vs Samurai Squad, and Hunter in the Dark. The camerawork is imaginative here. When at the beginning of the film, the two bodies are brought in by horse, they are brought in the village to be examined. The scene is shot with a body lying on the table, and the main focus is on his dirty feet, while in the background the men are discussing who did it. The blind woman talking to Kiba, and her reflection is seen from his blade is also memorable. The fight scenes are like Sam Peckinpah's -- slow motion, almost silent, and bloody, increasing in violence up to the final fight between the two samurai, where Uchida is bathed in his own blood as he dies. The black and white cinematography is excellent. Highly recommended! A classic.