E-Mail This Article to a Friend TWILIGHT SAMURAI

Veteran director Yoji Yamada’s revisionist samurai film, a smash hit in Japan, follows a low-ranking samurai (Hiroyuki Sanada) against a background of internal clan struggles in the mid 19th century, a period that was about to see the demise of the samurai class. The emphasis of the film is on the hero’s life as a widowed parent, his frustrated relationship with his childhood sweetheart, and his financial woes (one reason for the film’s success was, doubtless, the parallel between the life of a petty clan retainer and that of ordinary office workers today). Although this mild-mannered man turns out — in the film’s infrequent and superbly staged action interludes — to be a regular demon with the "short sword," Twilight Samurai plays more like a male soap opera than the kind of action-packed samurai fun exemplified by Yojimbo, the Lone Wolf and Cub series, or the Zatoichi films. In an excellent acting debut as a disobedient samurai, renowned dancer Min Tanaka reminds me of Manny Farber’s description of Robert Ryan in The Wild Bunch: he carries a "scent of death." In Japanese with English subtitles. (129m)