Ichi

Ichi is a new and interesting take on the Zatoichi character. In this film, Ichi is a woman (Haruka Ayase), a blind travelling musician and an expert with a sword who was trained by the original Zatoichi. As such, it's more of a sequel than a remake. We find her as she searches for her mentor, and the plot takes place in a familiar Yakuza-run small town, with many staples from the previous films included, like an obligatory visit to a gambling hall.

She meets Toma Fujihira (Takao Osawa), a man who cannot draw his sword because of a past shame and as he tells her, is currently on a pilgrimage. Soon after, Ichi kills a few members of a bandit gang who threatens them. Local yakuza believe that it was Toma who killed the bandits, and want to hire him as a bodyguard. There's also an annoying kid that hangs around with the two, and provides comic relief.

Now, I'm a fan of the Zatoichi films and I think Fumihiko Sori is an extremely talented director, so I was really looking forward to this. Sadly, it's a disappointment. It's not exactly a bad film, just one that is so dramatically uneven in tone that it doesn't reach it's full potential, so many moments of greatness that are sullied with poor characters, ridiculously cheesy acting and unfunny moments of humor. The character of Toma is rather annoying because he flips between serious and comic roles.

Ichi opens with a very bleak scene, it sets a dark and serious tone for the film. It's matched with beautiful cinematography, at times it echoed a Yoji Yamada samurai drama, and Ayase puts in an extremely good performance as the title character. But there's a complete shift in tone when the villains are onscreen; brash over the top characters that seem like they're from another film entirely and just don't fit in at all. It's almost as if The Hidden Blade collided with Azumi, and the result was a film that unexpectedly hops from serious and somber to camp and silly. Shido Nakamura plays the bandit leader Banki, a one note character devoid of any depth, notable only because of his ridiculous cackle. It's a shame because Nakamura is a far, far better actor than this, as his roles in Ping Pong and Letters From Iwo Jima show.

Sori is indeed a very capable director, his first film Ping Pong was absolutely brilliant, and the animated Vexille was a fairly decent piece of Sci-Fi action, so it's a pity that Ichi went so terribly wrong. There's a lot of the film I liked, many stand out moments, and the scenes that gave back story on the character of Ichi were especially good, but it's just too uneven and ultimately ends up as a film that is less than the sum of it's parts. With such a great concept, a talented director and good cast, it should have been so much more. Kitano's Zatôichi from 2003 will probably remain the best new take on the classic character for some time.