Takeshi Kitano's very first period set film is a new entry in the Zatoichi franchise - the blind masseur with a fondness for gambling and helping out exploited folks with his sword skills. Much like features such as the mighty Lone Wolf & Cub films by Kenji Misumi and Tsui Hark's similarly excellent The Blade, this is another hugely enjoyable, non-black and white, violent sword fighting revenge feature. The recent success of Kill Bill seems to have done wonders for this genre in terms of advertisement as this dvd and others like it are currently being displayed alongside Tarantino's homage in the prime position spots of many UK stores. Where was I? Oh yeah...

Kitano's Zatoichi features some brilliant examples of how to choreograph visuals with soundtrack, not just in the fight scenes either. And it must be said that the film features an especially clever ambiguous ending. The colours of the film have been saturated which makes the often cgi created blood effects stand out no end - using cgi might seem distressing to some purists out there but personally, I thought that it was used very well. The film does feature comedy but it's usually fairly subtle and certainly doesn't detract from the more serious revenge and exploitation of innocents themes that run throughout. And Kitano's performance as Zatoichi is magnificent, especially considering that I'd never seen him handle a sword before, nevermind using it with his eyes closed.

Whilst I realise that many will only be interested in the fighting sequences alone, Zatoichi features beautiful photography and some thoughtful camera movements making it stand out as a damn good film in it's own right, not just in the swordplay genre. But regardless of that, these types of films will usually only ever appeal to the same subculture of movie fans - you know who you are! Having said that, with the success of Kill Bill and it's infamous House Of Leaves segment, perhaps that trend will change? I hope so. The bottom line here is that if you enjoy watching these sort of films, you'll love Zatoichi. I fail to see how you could go wrong...

Moving on to the dvd itself, this region two release by Artificial Eye has an anamorphic print which is slightly too grainy in the night time sequences but it's nothing too serious, I can certainly live with that. The disc has a choice of 2.0 or 5.1 sound mixes (Japanese only) with optional subtitles, an impressive 40 minute behind-the-scenes featurette, a trailer, a gallery and filmography. Making this a pleasingly well treated Asian sword fighting release by a UK dvd company. Which definetly makes a change from the norm! Let's hope that with the new wave of interest in this genre, these types of films get the region two treatments that they truly deserve.

BTW Those UK dvds of the Lone Wolf & Cub series are shockingly poor releases, take my word for it and don't even consider picking them up at any price. The recently issued US equivalents put them to complete and utter shame. An anamorphic region two copy of The Blade would also be nice. Fingers crossed eh?