jamesrupert2014 Review of Three Outlaw Samurai

Three Outlaw Samurai (1964)

Revisionist sword-opera - excellent but grim and disenchanting

[9/10 · 14 November 2021]

Wandering ronin Sakon Shiba (Tetsuro Tamba) happens across the politically motivated kidnapping of a young woman and slowly begins to side with the peasant farmers who see the abduction as the only way to get their message of despair to the local lord. He is eventually joined in his one-sided fight by fellow ronin, jovial Kyojuro Sakura (Isamu Nagato) and mercenary Einosuke Kikyo (Mikijiro Hira). Director Hideo Gosha's first film has the nihilistic feel characteristic of his early features, most notably at the end of the film, when it is unclear whether anything was accomplished by all of the preceding pain and bloodshed. The sense of 'honour' that is common in the previous decade's chanbara films is pointedly ignored as characters routinely break their most sacred pledges, money takes precedent over tradition or 'bushido', and neither side is above holding a blade to a woman's throat as a negotiating tool. The story bears some similarities to Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' (1954) but the positive messages in the earlier film, such as when the weak finally find the strength to stand up for themselves, are absent (for the most part, in Goshas' films the weak who take on the strong end up exactly how you'd expect them to). The sword play is quite good (and fairly bloody for an early 1960s jidaigeki) although bows and arrows, which would completely scuttle the plot, are noticeably absent. The black and white cinematography is excellent and the film's sometimes desolate look perfectly matches its feel. All in all, an excellent samurai sword-opera and an auspicious debut for a fine Japanese director.