Takeshi Kitano’s Zatôichi is not only one of the best movies Kitano has made so far, it’s a distillation of everything he’s ever put into his movies. In his time Kitano has moved through grim, nihilistic police-and-yakuza dramas (Violent Cop, Brother, Sonatine, Hana-bi), bittersweet childhood stories (Kids Return, Kikujiro), tender romance (A Scene at the Sea, Dolls), slapstick comedy (Getting Any?) and absurdist farce (Boiling Point). Every single one of his movies has always been identifiably his. Now, in his revisionist take on a character that has been the subject of dozens of previous movies, he does what other directors have typically done with Shakespeare or Chaucer: he takes the material and makes it unmistakably his own.
Zatôichi the Blind Masseur figured into dozens of films adapted from Kan Shimozawa’s novels, released over the span of several decades in Japan. Most of the movies starred Shintaro Katsu in the title role—a wandering masseur with a sword concealed in his cane, righting wrongs wherever he went by simply sticking to his principles (and his weapon). Zatôichi (the “zato” being a titular prefix; his real name being Ichi) is as identifiable a character to the Japanese—both in his look and his manner—as Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp is to most everyone. The interesting thing is that American audiences who aren’t as familiar with the character can start here and probably get just as good an understanding of what makes him tick as they would from any of the original movies (which are all good-to-excellent as well). Kitano was not only able to preserve the spirit of the original character, but channel it through many of his own concerns.
