• 浪人街 (Roningai)

7/23/23 (Sun), home, w/ Shinpei, 4:30-6:30p

Kuroki Kazuo’s 1990 film is the fourth remake of a silent-era epic by the legendary Makino Masahiro. Masahiro himself was supposed to helm the work as a tribute to his father Shozo, known as the founder of Japanese film, but became sick and passed the mantle on for some reason to Kuroki, not known for period pieces. Unfortunately his lack of experience shows.

The date is specified for some reason as Tempo 7 (1836), a few years before the harsh (and ultimately unsuccessful) Tempo Reforms launched by the shogunate to energize the economy and crack down on discontent. Shogunal society was already clearly breaking down some two decades before the arrival of the Black Ship.

The movie focuses, if that’s the word for an unfocused film, on four fallen ronin who frequent an Edo brothel. All experience humiliation throughout, and none are particularly pleasant characters. Aramaki (Harada Yoshio) is a sullen, unkempt, apathetic and oft-undressed “vermin samurai” who seems to have given up on life. He sponges off of Oshin (Higuchi Kanako), a samurai’s daughter turned high-end prostitute. Doi (Tanaka Kunie) is now a bird seller smelling of bird droppings who dreams of winning reacceptance into the clan, even considering selling his sister at one point to earn the money for the necessary bribes. Horo (Ishibashi Renji) makes money by the humiliating work of testing swords on corpses (he’s lucky they’re dead – swords could also be tested on live vagrants and other “non-persons”). He longs for Oshin, who shows no interest. Meanwhile, the aptly-named Akaushi or “Bull” (Katsu Shintaro in his final film) is an all-around no-goodnik and self-proclaimed protector of the women.

In a twist on the familiar tale, seven samurai (a number unlikely to have been chosen by accident) have been murdering prostitutes in an effort to clean up the town, and it is the ronin who eventually take them on. Akaushi defects to the other side in desperation for a steady income, to the extent of fetching one member’s shoe by the teeth and barking like a dog to show his loyalty. When the villains capture Oshin, it is Akaushi who suggests tying each of her legs to a bull and having them run in opposite directions. The three remaining ronin are finally roused from their virtual stupor and, in a melodramatic sequence, come running separately from the brothel to save the day: an inebriated Aramaki comes in a virtual loincloth waving multiple swords, Horo rushes in dressed all in white (which is quickly soaked in blood), and Doi, wearing full armor, charges in on a horse. Akaushi, feeling pangs of guilt for deserting them, makes up for it with a creative if ridiculous action that brings the battle, and Katsu’s film career, to a definitive close.

The characters are too exaggerated to take seriously, a problem exacerbated by overripe acting. Aramaki in particular is impossibly dissolute, more like a manga character than a real person. His drunken appearance in the final battle is embarrassingly bad. The director seems to be making a straightforward chambara rather than a critique of the samurai code as common in 1960s films – a sign of the times, I suppose. But he seems to have no idea of just how to do it. The story badly needs tightening, and while ensemble films can work – Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai comes immediately to mind – they need realistic characters that hold our interest. None of the ronin here is either credible or likable, giving us no one to root for. Worse, the chambara showdown is laughably inept, both in the choreography and camerawork. To be fair, Kuroki is not a chambara director, but then why on earth did they choose him? The acting is also incompetent, with only Katsu and Harada getting away with it through sheer bravado. Higuchi was fine as the main prostitute, but the woman in general had a modern take that didn’t fit with the Edo setting. This might have worked as an anime, but they need a much better cast to pull this off in a live version.

The film at least looked good thanks to splendid cinematography and production values. But that’s not enough to save this muddle. The concept is solid, and a good film probably lies in there somewhere. But not here.