This is a very grim film which attempts to explore the connection between power (or, if you will, skill) and evil. We're treated to scenes of intense violence punctuated by periods of relative calm in the life of Ryunosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), an expert martial arts swordsman with no clan loyalties who gets caught up in a cycle of revenge after killing an opponent (Ichiro Nakaya) in a duel. He compounds his problems by running away with his bitter wife (Michiyo Aratama), who is pregnant from an encounter with Ryunosuke by which she hoped to save her husband's life before the duel. Ryunosuke spends the rest of his years drinking sake and working for some kind of assassination mafia, while waiting for the man's younger brother Hyoma (Yuzo Kayama) to seek him out for revenge.
The best thing about the film is the intense visuals director Okamoto frames the action with psychological intent and Murai's photography emphasizes the hopelessness and desolation of Ryunosuke's situation. The battle scenes at the end are viscerally effective, even if for my taste they were a bit excessive. Basically it made Ryunosuke into more of a mythic figure as opposed to a human one. It's certainly possible to make an exciting Samurai/Ronin film without departing so far from reality for instance in Kurosawa's famous "Seven Samurai" we have 7 trained warriors fighting 30-something relatively untrained fighters on horseback a relatively realistic though still daunting encounter. But in "Sword of Doom" we have one man becoming a killing machine, dispatching dozens of men within minutes. In this finale and in the battle where sword-master Toranosuke Shimada (Toshiro Mifune) defends himself from an assassination attempt, the assailants wait to attack one by one like video game opponents. It's reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" as well as later films like DePalma's version of "Scar Face" and Tarantino's "Kill Bill". I understand that this is a stylized presentation of violence and I understand that not it's not requisite that film be realistic, but to me this type of action is like slashing with the sword instead of stabbing a lot of blood is spilt but none of the wounds are deep. Eventually we reach a point where all that's left is action without real violence. And in that case it becomes very difficult to form a critique of violence -- which I think was the primary goal of this film.
Just generally speaking the conclusion of this film was unsatisfactory to me. All this drama was built up around Hyoma, and unless I missed something in the flurry of killings nothing ever happened to this major element in the plot. Also totally unresolved was the issue of Hyoma's love for Omatsu (Yoko Naito), a young girl who was in danger of becoming a concubine. Either I missed this resolution, or this film was intended to end on a cliffhanger. Basically though the last time we see Omatsu she's cowering in fear in a corner of the dojo and Ryunosuke goes ballistic because of something she says about her father. Now there's several ways to see this we could conclude that Omatsu is safe because Ryunosuke is now fully distracted by his dementia. Why did Ryunosuke become so upset over the mention of her father, who he so casually slaughtered at the beginning of the film? Was he driven mad by the realization that he was caught in a "circle of fate", with his former victims returning to even the score of fate? He didn't seem intimidated by the idea of Hyoma's vengeance, so it seems odd that he would be so upset by the news that Hyoma's girlfriend was the grand-daughter of the random pilgrim he killed that sunny afternoon unless the killing wasn't random? It's not inherently bad for a film to leave the audience with questions of course. But for me these are not questions that have any real weight or consequence.
All in all, I think the film deserves credit for some thrilling sequences but it does not add up to any kind of substantial or relevant theme. The only thing we really get is "an evil mind makes the evil sword" where Ryunosuke's father had insisted that his skill and power with the sword had gotten to his head and made him evil, Shimada's conclusion is that he was evil in the first place and that caused him to become an evil warrior. To me it's not a hugely interesting premise and the film didn't do enough to make it relevant to my life.
The best thing about the film is the intense visuals director Okamoto frames the action with psychological intent and Murai's photography emphasizes the hopelessness and desolation of Ryunosuke's situation. The battle scenes at the end are viscerally effective, even if for my taste they were a bit excessive. Basically it made Ryunosuke into more of a mythic figure as opposed to a human one. It's certainly possible to make an exciting Samurai/Ronin film without departing so far from reality for instance in Kurosawa's famous "Seven Samurai" we have 7 trained warriors fighting 30-something relatively untrained fighters on horseback a relatively realistic though still daunting encounter. But in "Sword of Doom" we have one man becoming a killing machine, dispatching dozens of men within minutes. In this finale and in the battle where sword-master Toranosuke Shimada (Toshiro Mifune) defends himself from an assassination attempt, the assailants wait to attack one by one like video game opponents. It's reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" as well as later films like DePalma's version of "Scar Face" and Tarantino's "Kill Bill". I understand that this is a stylized presentation of violence and I understand that not it's not requisite that film be realistic, but to me this type of action is like slashing with the sword instead of stabbing a lot of blood is spilt but none of the wounds are deep. Eventually we reach a point where all that's left is action without real violence. And in that case it becomes very difficult to form a critique of violence -- which I think was the primary goal of this film.
Just generally speaking the conclusion of this film was unsatisfactory to me. All this drama was built up around Hyoma, and unless I missed something in the flurry of killings nothing ever happened to this major element in the plot. Also totally unresolved was the issue of Hyoma's love for Omatsu (Yoko Naito), a young girl who was in danger of becoming a concubine. Either I missed this resolution, or this film was intended to end on a cliffhanger. Basically though the last time we see Omatsu she's cowering in fear in a corner of the dojo and Ryunosuke goes ballistic because of something she says about her father. Now there's several ways to see this we could conclude that Omatsu is safe because Ryunosuke is now fully distracted by his dementia. Why did Ryunosuke become so upset over the mention of her father, who he so casually slaughtered at the beginning of the film? Was he driven mad by the realization that he was caught in a "circle of fate", with his former victims returning to even the score of fate? He didn't seem intimidated by the idea of Hyoma's vengeance, so it seems odd that he would be so upset by the news that Hyoma's girlfriend was the grand-daughter of the random pilgrim he killed that sunny afternoon unless the killing wasn't random? It's not inherently bad for a film to leave the audience with questions of course. But for me these are not questions that have any real weight or consequence.
All in all, I think the film deserves credit for some thrilling sequences but it does not add up to any kind of substantial or relevant theme. The only thing we really get is "an evil mind makes the evil sword" where Ryunosuke's father had insisted that his skill and power with the sword had gotten to his head and made him evil, Shimada's conclusion is that he was evil in the first place and that caused him to become an evil warrior. To me it's not a hugely interesting premise and the film didn't do enough to make it relevant to my life.