Silhouetted against the entrance of a blazing building, a straw-hatted ronin stands defiant. As the fire burns, he hears the voice of his sensei, Sanjuro: “It is said that those who have attained true balance canvision, its chiaroscuro imagery and careful compositions evoking the aesthetic of black-and-white samurai films. Protagonist Hiroki will fight opponents as a deadly shadow behind shoji doors; across storm-lashed fields and muddy villages pillaged by bandits; and on rickety wooden bridges over rushing rivers, the corpses of his victims floating past the camera. Familiar scenes all, but each is rendered with a rare combination of richness and grit. Its use of shallow focus, meanwhile, is exemplary: one early shot presents us with a distant view of our lead, the blurry outline of a bandit in the foreground hovering at the edge of the frame, before retreating from sight as Hiroki advances.
