Takeshi Kitano's performance as blind swordsman Zatoichi is not very expressive. But that may be just what happens when a new director takes on character as beloved as Zatoichi (i.e. you don't want to mess it up). Instead Beat Takeshi focuses on an array of vividly imagined characters such as a transvestite geisha, a ronin samurai with a tuberculoid wife, and a gambler whose luck has run out long ago. The Zatoichi from the 60s was more funny with exaggerated facial expressions and constant sweating. But much like the original Zatoichi, Takeshi's blind masseur is the conduit through which we learn about a new community and its characters. Everyone is tied together, it seems, by Zatoichi's presence although he does little more than grunt, smile, and keep his head humbly low. Oh yeah, he also likes to slice people up when they get on his bad side.

From the new film, it's clear that Zatoichi is a kind of Japanese Superman. Anyone who's seen the second volume of Kill Bill will remember Quentin Tarantino's dissertation on the essential difference between Superman and other superheroes (i.e. he was born that way and tries to blend in by becoming a weak person). Zatoichi is a superhero without a past (we never learn how he was blinded or if he was blind at all) and with a celibate, almost avuncular presence, he doesn't appear to have much of a future either. But that is the essence of the Zatoichi legend: he travels as a perpetual fugitive without a destination. Always optimistic, he's learned to turn his liability into a strength. Indeed, a constant theme of the film is how this blind man can somehow see the world with even greater clarity than those who take their five senses for granted.

The film is often deeply funny with a humanistic heart. The tale of the pedophile victim turned transvestite would be troubling and tragic in any other film, but here it is also comic as he/she takes pride in his/her beauty and even almost converts an envious man. The humorless samurai who has perfected the art of merciless killing somehow becomes a sympathetically tragic character. Flashbacks tell us about how people become ruthless, but even the most ruthless yakuza boss tries to make a funny face just to get a laugh out of a kid.

Takeshi's film may be more about visual candy, taking great care to please its audience. At times, Takeshi even threatens to take the film to Busby Berkeley musical extremes (tap dancing anyone?). The computer generated dismembered limbs and blood generates ooohs and aaahs and also resembles Kill Bill, which itself was an offshoot of earlier Japanese exploitation films. You can see the delight in choreographing the intricacies of battle where every move is like clockwork. The perfection of the swordsmen skill is fun and thrilling in its artifice. All this movie asks of its audience is to have a good time. No wonder it keeps winning the audience awards at film festivals like Venice and Toronto. You will have a good time watching Zatoichi, but you may also wonder if you would have preferred an emotional, philosophical film that followed Takeshi's humanistic sensibility of films like Kikujiro.
-Howard Ho