"Over-the-top" and "excessive"
are two phrases that can be pointed in the general direction of director Miike
Takashi: the high-octane montage that greets us to the “Dead or Alive” trilogy;
the comical blood-splatting of “Ichi the Killer”; the extensive battle scene of
“13 Assassins”. All are examples of pushing cinema to its limits of taste,
morality and viewer boredom threshold.
The third is an interesting one. His late Nineties
and early new millennium films were often notable for their excessive violence,
however, this violence was often creatively twisted into place alongside other,
often stronger elements. The nature of relationships and power balances between
characters in “Ichi the Killer”; the slow-building tension of “Audition”; the
nostalgia of…”Nostalgia”. With the budgets more limited, Miike would seemingly
earn his stripes and get creative, but now with the budgets and hype much
greater, has excess simply become self-indulgence?
Based on the manga, “Blade of the
Immortal”, the supposed ninety-ninth film of Miike’s now one hundred not out
career, starts with Manji (Takyu Kimura) with a price on his head, fighting off
a hoard of bounty hunters, while trying to protect his younger sister. A
troubled, masterless samurai, Manji duly fights them all off, but at the cost
of numerous wounds. Pouring blood worms into his wounds, a mysterious old woman
heals Manji, giving him the curse of immortality, though the same cannot be
said for his sister.
Switching forward
fifty years, Manji has been living a desolate life alone and un-aged, but is
sought by the young daughter of a dojo master killed by the Itto-ryu: a school
determined to resurrect the skill of sword-fighting as a necessary evil, unlike
the simple physical education it has become. Wary at first, Manji vows to help
Rin (Hana Sugisaki) get her revenge, largely, it seems, because she resembles
his young sister. Bloodshed ensues as the Itto-ryu (and others) challenge Manji
to battle one-by-one, soon discovering his immortal powers.
The Itto-ryu also
seek to become the Shogun’s fencing school of choice, but find themselves
deceived by the Shogun’s army resulting in a three-way stand-off between Manji
and Rin, Anotsu (Sota Fukushi, the head of the Itto-ryu) and the Shogun’s vast
forces…and some other side story characters thrown-in again at the end to
further the silliness. What results is a perhaps overly-long sword fight
between hundreds of men and a couple of women in the vein of "13
Assassins".
On balance, there is probably more bad than good
with "Blade of the Immortal". Over-indulgence perhaps the main
problem. While we expect this to be a slash-fest with arms chopped-off galore,
when this is the main crux of the film, it becomes a little tedious. An obvious
comparison, "Ichi the Killer" centred around two main characters and
their sadomasochistic relationships with those who hold power over them. The
gore is an amusing and fun distraction, rather than the main draw.
Here, Miike chooses to go for long, drawn-out fight
scenes that offer little after the first thirty seconds other than just adding
to the body count. Little is particularly developed in terms of characterisation,
other than Manji coming to terms with immortality being a fate worse than death
and his explanation to Rin that revenge only leads to bloodshed - something
Miike adequately shows. Villain Anotsu delivers a surface-level monologue
midway through the film, but beyond this, the audience is given few clues as to
whether to love or loath him.
Extended fight scenes is nothing new to Miike, with
"13 Assassins" having the mother of all battles, but this was an epic
battle to which the film had been building, rather than a extended slash-fest, having
already had some earlier slash-fests.
The film looks pretty in parts, with some good
cinematography and the special effects fit the bill. But as a bigger, more
anticipated release than perhaps his films in the Nineties received, the bigger
scale has come at the cost of creativity. His peer Shinya Tsukamoto still works
to limited budgets, but still creates some inventive and interesting works.
Manji is referred to as the "Hundred Man
Killer" and Miike is now a one hundred production director. But with his
recent trajectory, his career seems not so much immortal, rather a slow death.
