• 斬る (Destiny’s Son)

12/27/24 (Fri)

Misumi Kenji’s 1962 chambara flick inconveniently has the same Japanese title Kiru (meaning slash to death) as Okamoto Kihachi’s wild 1968 work, which managed to beat the earlier film to the obvious English choice Kill.

The film opens with a dynamic sequence in which a maidservant sneaks in and stabs the lord’s mistress to death “for the sake of the clan”. Skipping forward a year, we learn that the man chosen to execute her has fallen in love with her, and it is only after their son is born that he duly cuts her head off. He entrusts the child to a low-ranking samurai and becomes a monk, shutting himself off from the world entirely.

We skip forward another 20 years to find the boy, now a young man, seeking permission from his stepfather to take a three-year journey. That is permitted, and we skip ahead yet another three years to his return, when he reveals that he used the time to study swordsmanship. He reluctantly participates in a sword contest, which he handily wins, unknowingly angering a higher-ranking samurai who fully expected his own son to triumph. The samurai starts spreading rumors about the boy’s roots and ultimately murders his father and sister. The son learns only then that the rumors about his parentage are true. This begins a cycle of revenge, including further leaps both backward and forward in time.

The irritatingly episodic nature of the film makes it feel like parts are left out. It’s hard to sympathize with the main character given the lack of details in the short (71 minutes) running time. The psychological side carries interest – as one review noted, the main guy loses three father figures and three sister figures in the course of the show – but it is undeveloped as it stands.

The visual splendor and impeccably set-up shots were impressive but sometimes seem more the point than the story itself. The chambara sequences were excellent, not showing a lot of blood but beautifully choreographed. The acting, on the other hand, was variable. Ichikawa Raizo (An Osaka Tale, Conflagration), a major star at the time, doesn’t do much for me here but gets the job done. For Raizo or Misumi completists only.