a review of 无限之住人

Ever since I was a kid I've always been a sucker for anything related to feudal Japan. Samurai, ninjas, honor, death, the pleasantly clear contrast of good versus bad, protagonists versus antagonists, with seemingly nothing in between. And of course lots of aesthetically impeccable armor and weaponry. This is one of the reasons why movie maestro Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is among my all-time favorite films. All the mentioned ingredients are present in Blade of the Immortal. I enjoyed this signature Miike film, which I'd describe as a live-action version of violent anime, with a wink to Kurosawa. The only thing that keeps me from giving it a really high rating is the excessiveness. I don't mean explicit violence, because by Miike's standards this film wasn't that gory. It was the exhausting amount of swordfighting that started to make the film repetitive. And the inordinate amount of killed opponents eliminated every last bit of credibility. Sure, I was aware that Blade of the Immortal is a fantasy flick, and for the most part I accepted it as a feudal fairy-tale, but in the end the sword-fighting became too cartoonishly over the top, like a computer game with too many enemies. But nonetheless I had a good time watching it.