{Quest Reviewer : Brendito}
(Note that this review was pieced together from various emails, and slight editing has occurred to preserve flow)

 
Quick Rating: *
 
 
 

I ended up seeing a bad movie last week.  Have you seen or at least heard of The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi?  I remember when it had its short run in theaters not too long ago, and I saw glowing reviews for it.  Apparently Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up.  And it won at a couple of film festivals, too.  I simply can't understand what those people were thinking.  It's on DVD now, and I think it's another one of those Quentin Tarantino Presents... situations.  It was awful.  Zatoichi is supposed to be this blind, wandering swordsman walking around feudal Japan I guess, but he's supposedly disguised as a masseur, so he gives massages.  And he's Japanese, but for some reason he's blonde...  And he was only in the 2-hour movie for maybe 15 or 20 minutes.  And he didn't even really talk to people, they would talk to him and he would just kind of give this strange laugh and make really ugly faces.  He was always scrunching up his face.  And for a movie called The Blind SWORDSMAN, you'd expect a lot of swordfights, but you'd be wrong.  There were a few, but very short, and the CG blood effects were cheesy.  And then there was the big dance number.  And the cross-dresser.  And LOTS of gambling on whether the dice would roll an even or an odd number.  And the guy who wanted to try wearing makeup to see if he could be as beautiful as the cross-dresser.  And the morphing of dancing adults to children and back again.  Oh, did I mention the fat guy who wore basically nothing and ran around with a spear screaming at the top of his lungs because he thought he was a samurai?  You better believe that he danced too.  The whole viewing experience is like a mental stain that I want to dig out of my mind with an ice-cream scoop.

Did I say that there was a lot of sake drinking in Zatoichi?  There was.  And a lot of the bartender giving the sake bottle to a customer so that the customer could bring the sake to another customer who had ordered the sake and then the customer who had to serve the sake complaining about having to serve the sake when all he wanted to do was drink his own sake.  Why couldn't the bartender just serve the sake himself?  I know not.  So many hilarious hijinks, it's hard to remember them all.  

There were a few drawn out scenes where the "action" on-screen would be in time with the music.  For instance, there were some farmers working a field with hoes, and their swings corresponded to notes of the music.  And the music would sound like hoes striking the dirt.  Nothing says samurai movie like synchronized hoein'.  In fact, I think it's going to be an event in the next summer Olympics. 

I kept watching the movie thinking it was going to get better, and it just never did.  Then, coming up on the 2 hour mark I thought, maybe there'll be a big payoff at the end that will make the whole miserable journey worthwhile.  Well, there certainly was a payoff, but that nickel didn't make up for the rest of the movie. 

At least it came as a double feature with another movie by the same guy who wrote, directed, and starred in Zatoichi.  I have yet to watch the other one.  I think it was billed as a Japanese Goodfellas.  I'm expecting it to have a pivotal scene about basket weaving.  

If you ask me to rate Zatoichi,  I guess I'd give it an overall 1 out of 5.  For the 0-10 scale stuff...call it a 1 for quality, 5 for visuals (it had production value; it looked okay in spite of everything else), 2 for intensity, and I'd go with a 3 for laughability. 

I think those scores are okay.  They reflect the fact that the movie is set in what appears to be feudal Japan, yet at one point somebody pulls out a pistol that by all rights would not have been invented for several hundred more years.  And for the fact that some shots where characters walked toward the camera had them walking right up to the camera lens so you can't see anything but bellybutton and then not cutting away for another couple seconds.  Those shots were truly intense.  Almost more so than scenes of the child molester preying on young boys.  Oh yeah, this movie had everything. 

My guest reviewer name should be either "Lou Spantz" or "Ty Tundees". 

(Sorry, I went with "Brendito")
 

Quality: 1.0  Visuals: 5.0  Intensity: 2.0  Laughability: 3.0 
OVERALL RATING: 2.8