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So much average

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This film is the third of Yoji Yamada's samurai films, each a retelling of famed Japanese author Shohei Fujisawa's short stories. This time around we are given a title character (Shinnojo Miura) who is married but unhappy with his life. For one, he takes no satisfaction in his job as a food taster and wishes to open up a sword school for children. However, his dreams never come to fruition due to a sudden illness that leaves Shinnojo blind for life. The story thus follows his tribulations as he comes to terms with his condition and how it changes his relationship with others.For a samurai story this film has very little fighting. It takes place during the Edo Period which was a time of relative peace where samurai were mostly incorporated in to society as bureaucrats and public officials. This follows along the lines of the other two films by the same director (Twilight Samurai and Hidden Blade). Unfortunately, this third entry does not measure up in terms of story and acting. The main actor, Takuya Kimura is a passable actor but he lacks the defining qualities that convincingly show the subdued emotion and stoic mannerisms of a troubled samurai. Moreover, the climactic payoff at the end falls short because it is very predictable. If given the choice to see a samurai film go with Hidden Blade first, then Twilight Samurai, and finally this one.

Yoji Yamada's appropriately dubbed 'Love and Honor' is a samurai's story of just that; Takuya Kimura is Mimura, a samurai who is used to test food for poisoning by eating it in order to prevent the lord of his clan from being poisoned. Mimura becomes blind after being fed an off-season food that can become poisonous if not prepared properly. Unable to provide for himself, Mimura becomes suicidal. His loving wife Kayo declares her support for him, offering to follow him into death. Mimura is convinced to continue on living, but with Mimura unable to provide for he and his family, his wife is left to find a way to support them. In this classic tale of love and honor, follow a blind man's struggles to find peace of mind as he tries to follow his samurai code.

Do we need to know everything? Would our lives be better if there were certain things we didn't know? These are matters addressed in this story of a samurai family and life in feudal Japan. It was the duty of certain lower level samurai to taste the food before serving it to the lord of the clan in case it might be poisoned. When Shinnojo Mimura, one of the food tasters, eats some tainted sashimi of an off-season shellfish, he falls ill. After a period of unconsciousness, he awakes to find that he is unable to see. At first, he tries to hide the fact from his deeply loyal wife, Kayo, for fear of worrying her. When she understands that, she protests that she is his wife and it is her duty to worry for her husband. However, when she learns from the doctor, who has withheld the truth from his patient, that this blindness is permanent, she also avoids telling her husband, in order to spare his feelings. There are certain truths that are better for us not to confront. Gossip, however, is another matter. When Mimura's busybody aunt comes with news that Kayo has been seen in the company of another man, he throws the aunt out of the house, but he is left with doubts. Is such a thing true about his loving wife? Mimura decides it is something he must know, regardless of consequences, so he sends his servant to follow her and report back to him. The rest of the film deals with what must be done in order to restore honor. It is a fascinating look at life, duty and honor during the samurai era and well worth watching. Takuya Kimura (Mimura), Rei Dan (Kayo) and Takashi Sasano, the loyal but sometimes confounded servant, all give memorable performances.

When YAMADA Yoji set out to make his "samurai trilogy", he was very clear in his mind what he wanted to do. "Twilight samurai" (2002) and "The hidden blade" (2004) both offer an image of samurais unlike what we are used to – proud, cool, fierce. It's not that these qualities are not found in Yamada's samurais, but such qualities are overshadowed by the consciousness of a demeaning class system and a very human concern for daily livelihood, mundane but necessary. "Love and honour" carries on with the same theme, but with a slight variation in key, so to speak.The protagonist in L&H is a young samurai (played by pop and TV superstar KIMURA Yakuya, whose name I'll use here for convenience) of reasonably respected rank. Losing his father when he was quite young, he was fortunate enough to receive a good education. At the beginning of the story, therefore, he is not a victim of the predicaments of poverty or class prejudice we saw in the previous two of the trilogy. While not spectacular, life is stable and comfortable for Kimura and his beautiful wife, served by a loyal old servant that is not unlike "Alfred" ("Batman begins"), but of a comical kind.The "day in the office" for a samurai is dull when there is no war, as is the case during our story, and what excitement there is comes with a special duty for some of the samurais – food testing for their feudal lord, as a security procedure against poison. The story really begins at the occurrence of a rare incident, when Kimura is blinded by poison that has accidentally found its way into the food he is testing.Here's when we are back to the convergence of the common theme. All of a sudden, Kimura feels like he is plunging into a dark abyss (both literally and figuratively), with thoughts that had never ever occurred to him before, such as whether he now has to make his livelihood as a beggar, all these despite the fact that he has a most loving and devoted wife. This becomes quite ironic when the wife, desperate for the mercy of the feudal lord in recognizing Kimura's service and keeping him on the payroll despite the fact that he is now blind, yields to the sexual advancement of the samurai superintend in exchange for the latter's promise to put in a good word for her husband. To cut a long story short, things come to a head with Kimura's discovery of his wife's well intended but ill advised action, culminating in a climactic duel with the villain.This is quite a simple story but the movie excels in its telling. There is the characteristic attention to details in Japanese, and furthermore in Yamads's movies. The reaction of this young (perhaps even a little spoilt) samurai to the devastating calamity is well depicted. But the otherwise gloomy narration is brightened, and lightened, at suitable point by humour (some of which sarcastic), provided chiefly by the faithful old servant and a nosy aunt who pops up from time to time. But the important thing is that the movie does not lose sight of the main theme. It is after learning the generosity of the feudal lord in granting status quo despite his disability that Kimura finds back his sense of humour. He is now able to laugh at himself for banging his head against a pole, quipping "I think he really wants to kill me", with reference to an earlier joke he made with the old servant.Nor are dialogue and facial expression the only elements of excellence in this movie. Check out the comical scene of the nosy aunt's hurried exit with her two kids after Kimura had indicated in no uncertain terms that she had out-stayed her welcome. The body movement of the characters in question is more eloquent than the most hilarious dialogue. Watch also, at the scene when Kimura seeks instruction from his teacher, how, with constantly shifting and balancing movements with his toes and the balls of his feet, he is ready to pounce in a split-second upon the imagined opponent when he senses (remember that he cannot see) an opening. Just two of the ample proofs that every scene in this movie has been afforded the utmost attention by director Yamada.