The funniest gag may be seeing Takeshi Kitano, his eyes shut for most of the movie, with fake eyes painted on his eyelids.
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Note: Buena Vista´s DVD release of "Zatoichi" (2003) includes two discs--one for "Zatoichi" and one for "Sonatine", another movie directed by Takeshi Kitano. My ratings are for the "Zatoichi" disc, though you´ll find separate ratings for "Sonatine" in the Extras section of this review.
Beginning in the early-1960s, the Japanese created the phenomenon known as Zatoichi. Zatoichi the blind swordsman (played by Shintaro Katsu) is the focus of a twenty-six-movie series and approximately 100 TV episodes. Zatoichi wanders from town to town as a masseuse. However, given his reputation as a skillful warrior, Zatoichi manages to get involved in a variety of situations that require him to bust out a can of whoopass. :-)
In 2003, Takeshi Kitano--a producer/director/writer/actor/editor who´s an icon in his own right--released the first "Zatoichi" movie since 1989. People like to analogize samurai movies as Japanese Westerns, but not all samurai movies can be seen in that light. A lot of samurai movies are actually yakuza (Japanese gangster) pictures, and since Shintaro Katsu´s "Zatoichi" efforts had the blind hero fighting yakuza thugs most of the time, it made sense for Kitano, who makes a lot of contemporary yakuza movies, to helm the new "Zatoichi".
The basics of the "Zatoichi" series remain. Zatoichi gambles at dice rolling and inevitably gets into a fight over the dice because he wins too many times. The lovable protagonist is always amused by the circumstances surrounding him. Also, Zatoichi winds up helping the poor, the oppressed, and victims of awful crimes.
The similarities end there. Takeshi Kitano didn´t want to give audiences a tired re-tread of familiar sights, sounds, and tropes. First of all, Zatoichi is almost an incidental character in his own movie. Kitano focuses less on his own character than on several other players in a complicated story.
Secondly, those of you familiar with movies like "Hana-bi" and "Brother" may be surprised to discover that Kitano´s "Zatoichi" is basically a comedy. For example, countless samurai movies have scenes in which a lot of bad guys draw swords simultaneously while screaming like banshees. Kitano spoofs that convention by having one bad guy accidentally injuring one of his colleagues when drawing his sword and screaming like a banshee at the beginning of the movie. There´s the appearance of a village idiot who is half-nude/half-dressed-in-samurai-armor and who runs around screaming and charging with a spear. There´s a gambling junkie, played by the comedian Gadarukanaru Taka, who befriends Zatoichi; the gambling junkie tries to win at dice rolling by playing with his eyes closed like Zatoichi. A hilarious sequence involves the gambling junkie trying to teach three of his friends to fight with swords; his three friends wind up taking turns beating him on the head rather than hitting his sword. Kitano doesn´t mind the use of anachronistic terms such as "meiku uppu" for "make-up" rather than the actual Japanese term for "make-up". The funniest gag may be seeing Takeshi Kitano, his eyes shut for most of the movie, with fake eyes painted on his eyelids.
The third primary difference between the old "Zatoichi" and the new one is the use of music-and-dance numbers. Working with the performance group The Stripes (Japan´s version of The Blue Man Group/Stomp/Riverdance/etc.), Kitano sprinkles the movie with several sequences in which performers using everyday objects create symphonies of percussive sounds. Farmers using hoes in rice fields create beats that accompany the music score. The same farmers later dance in the same fields during a rain storm. Finally, the movie ends with a big production number that has nothing to do with the main narrative and everything to do with expressing the joy of people tap-and-stomp-dancing for the heck of it. All this isn´t even taking into account the appearance of two geishas who perform their own song-and-dance routine throughout the movie.
As I mentioned earlier in this review, the plot is fairly complicated. In one corner, there´s Ichi the Blind Masseur (Takeshi Kitano), of course. Ichi enjoys the hospitality of O-ume, a middle-aged woman who sells vegetables at a local market before being driven out of town by a yakuza gang. Shinchiki, the gambling junkie, is O-ume´s nephew. In another corner, you get O-kinu and O-sei, two geishas seeking to avenge the murders of their parents. O-sei is a transvestite because it´s easier for two girls rather than a girl and a boy to lower men´s sense of alertness.
In yet another corner, stands the ronin (masterless and disgraced) Hattori and his wife O-shino. O-shino is very ill, so Hattori hires himself out as a ruthless yojimbo (bodyguard) even though he and his wife both abhor his violent acts. Finally, there´s the Ginzo yakuza gang, in competition with another gang to control the town. The Ginzo gang is run by the people who murdered O-kinu and O-sei´s family, and the Ginzo gang hires Hattori to enforce its rule.
It´s fun to watch how Kitano deftly unravels the complex threads that tie these (and several more!) key characters together. However, the movie isn´t just about who is going to kill whom. Indeed, there actually isn´t that much violence, and whatever violence there is is marred by lousy CGI work. Rather, Kitano is more interested in observing the characters´ emotional and psychological states than in reveling in fight choreography. The most poignant moment is when O-kinu and O-sei practice their song-and-dance routine, and O-kinu sadly reminisces about how O-sei prostituted himself and learned his dance moves as a child in order to make money. This is a painful but beautiful moment because viewers get to see two actors (a child and an adult) perform an intricate traditional Japanese dance.
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