Movie Reviews

Last night, I watched King's Guard and Sword of Doom. King's Guard was almost utterly unwatchable. I didn't even bother fast-forwarding through it all. It might be fun for the little kids. Sword of Doom on the other hand... wow. While not in the league of Kurosawa's films, it's a tight, nice little black-and-white Critereon Collection film about a doomed swordsman who forsakes the path of honor for expediancy and pays the price. He falls in with a band of common assassins and thugs, and continues the spiral downward. He's a total sociopath, caring only for his skill with the sword since that's all that is left to him.

The great Toshiro Mifune has a role as the head of a sword school and shows everyone else how it's done: there is a scene where the assassin gang + our 'hero' Ryunosuke are going to kill a rival. The rival is protected by Mifune's character, though. The assassins make a mistake, follow the wrong pallanquin and wind up facing this master swordsman instead of the fat lord. He stands down 20 men and berates them for their lack of courtesy in admitting they made a mistake. The leader of the assassins doesn't want to admit it, and Mifune cuts them down like wheat, all except Ryunosuke who stands and watches the man's technique. At the end Mifune leaves the assassin leader alive, which is the worst most shameful thing to do to the leader, and gives Ryunosuke a brief lecture, ending with 'Evil mind. Evil Sword'. That's when Ryunosuke begins to realize what he's done with his wasted life and begins the downward spiral of madness that ends with him fighting like 50 guys in a burning courtesan house.

The only real problem is that, like most Toho fioms of the period that I have seen, it just ends in mid-action. Not too bad, but it also leaves unresolved a couple of major plotlines I really wanted to see taken care of. I really, really wanted to see him duel Hyoma and see if Hyoma's tsuki thrust was really the counter for Ryunosuke's 'cruel' style.