Description: With 25 film sequels and upwards of 100 TV episodes, Shintaro Katsu is the legendary Zatoichi! He’s a low-ranking blind masseur who lives by the Yakuza code and answers his foes with a deadly cane sword. By far one of Japan’s most time-honored screen personas, Zatoichi is to this day the ultimate everyman anti-hero.
Zatoichi and the Chess Expert is a visual feast of swordplay and relentless action. The blind swordsman befriends a wandering, chess-loving, battle-thirsty samurai and helps a young girl who has been accidentally wounded in a brutal sword fight. This spectacular film, photographed in gorgeous color and directed by samurai specialist Kenji Misumi, shows Zatoichi at his best: battling rival yakuza and angry relatives seeking retribution.
Checkmate! The chess player is not as central to the story as Zato's own internal conflict over his gangster lifestyle, which causes the near death of a young child. Zato is most compelling in his efforts to save the child and this film features a gripping and memorable scene where Zato looses some medicine he had just procured for the girl. It is Zatoichi's driving compassion that engages the viewer here more than the suspense between Zato and the chess master. You just know those two are going to brawl. I thought more could have been done with the chess metaphor and the calculation of made by characters throughout the film.
Excellent. As a lover of all zatoichi films, some are better the others. This is an excellent one. The title in a way indicates the detail put into each incident/scene. Each scene has the same thought of each move as in a chess game. Enjoy the moments as well as the story, though it ends all to soon and quickly. I could have watched it for hours more. Interesting different story lines intersect and entertain. No detail of plot given so enjoy.
#12: ANOTHER WONDERFUL ZATOICHI EPISODE Director Kenji Misumi did a great job with character development in this 12th Zatoichi outing. As with many of the films he did with Shintaro Katsu [6 in all] I noticed he did a great job with developing the characters for the most part. And in this episode he remains true to his directorial skills. Zatoichi [Shintaro Katsu] meets a Chess playing samurai named Jumonji [Mikio Narita] who does not like to lose. Travelling together these two characters make for an interesting watch in this particular episode.
There are some good twists to this episode, and although they should be expected by now after this 12th entry, it it pleasing to see how director Kenji Misumi utilized his talents to emply these twists. Moreover, the way they are woven into this Zatoichi fare is certainly interesting. There is less blood than in most of the Ichi episodes, but the story more than makes up for this. The characters in this episode of, "Zatoichi and the Chess Expert" are a real joy to watch, and you will not be disappointed with this excellent episode. I highly recommend this wonderful film.
Zato Ichi Is Possessed By The Demon Of Compassion. The state of blindness does not hinder the swordsman masseur, Zato Ichi, in this well-crafted tale of pre-modern Japan, as he is determined to do what is correct by assisting a young girl's recovery from a severe wound suffered in tangential fashion during a sword-fight involving gangsters in the bandit-ridden country. Of the approximately 25 Zato Ichi films, this must rank as one of the better ones, as Shintaro Katsu who portrays the sightless samurai during the entire series, permits us to see more of the inner man behind the warrior facade, aided by an interesting story written by Kan Shimozawa, who contributes the most complex scenarios of this group of works. In early civilized Japan, all masseurs were blind, as then they could not look upon the bodies of their clients, and Zato Ichi ("Ichi the Masseur") is following this tradition, but he is as well an inordinately successful warrior with his cane sword, mastering with cold aplomb each challenge by aggressors, no matter how many they might be. Ichi is a prototypical loner who makes his way in this work, as in all others, by massaging, while handsomely adding to his income through his cheating skills at gambling, since he is also an inveterate confidence man, yet one who makes mistakes and these errors in judgement serve in strengthening his accessibility to the viewer. There is a pleasingly intricate plot, which places Ichi as a travelling companion of an itinerant samurai named Jumonji, played well by Mikio Narita in his first cinematic role, who is the chess expert of the English language title, and the two interact with several other groups of characters in a neatly-woven narrative. The complicated scenario is capably handled by veteran director of samurai motion pictures, Kenji Misumi, who later added other outstanding Zato Ichi films to this first one in his list, as he balances the interwoven dramatics neatly and nicely. Reasons for the societal and artistic success of this series are manifest in this film, wherein Ichi represents values which most peoples are struggling to identify and capture, with the blind swordsman becoming an iconic figure as he stumbles and totters, rather than riding, into the sunset, after completing his clash with evil.
Excellent I am a huge fan of Zatoichi and I've collected alot of his films. This is among the best. I definitely would recommend this and other Zatoichi movies if your a fan of samurai cinema.
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