Watch Kill! For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fantastic!

Kill! follows two ronin who are caught up in the confounding intrigue of a local clan. Genta (Nakadai) a former samurai and yakuza member looks on as a group of seven retainers kill their master under orders from Ayuzawa (Koyama) the clan's leader. They are subsequently betrayed and cornered in a mountainside hobble. On the other side is Hanji (Takahashi), a farmer and relative novice who hopes to get into the clan's good graces and is brought along to hunt down the seven assassins. While Genta and Hanji are on opposite sides of the clan's convoluted back-and-forth, they form a bond and find themselves playing one side against the other.Kill! is a sneaky, Manzai inspired kick in the pants to samurai adventure tales which has dominated the Western notion of Japanese cinema for half a century. Even if you're brand new to Chanbara, you're at least familiar with the popular titles of Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo (1961) and the Zatoichi series (1962-1989). Their pensive, wistful examinations of the Bushido Code are often punctuated by flairs of Western inspired violence that audiences all over the world ate up like gobs of rolled sushi. And just like in America, Italy, France, Mexico et al., Japan contended with a vibrant counterculture movement that rapturously embraced maverick artists and film directors. Kill!, while not as immediately known as Rashomon (1950), was for all intents and purposes, the counterculture's happy warrior.Throughout the film are a litter with characters, who on all sides vary from hypocritical to downright disgusting. Ironically, other than the principle rogues, the only other redeemable characters are Oikawa (Kubo) the leader of the encumbered seven and Jurota (Kishida) the lead guard; two characters duty bound to kill one another. Yet even though they are the only characters to hold to the Bushido Code while no one's looking, they are also just smart enough to realize they're trapped by the twisted machinations of Ayuzawa and their own stupid pride.Director Kihachi Okamoto along with Seijun Suzuki and Kon Ichikawa was among the nation's most radical insurgents and found hypocrisy in every system ancient and contemporary. Over a career that spanned six decades, the WWII veteran made over forty films many of which dealt with the absurdities of war. He intermingled high-action with low- brow comedy, employing a lyrical style that contemporaries likened to over-the-top musical only without the music. While previous works like Samurai Assassin (1965) and The Sword of Doom (1966) saw Okamoto on his best behavior, by 1968 the gloves came off. Kill! openly and repeatedly mocks the lithe practices of the samurai, at one point using a solstice celebration to humorously distract from an ambush. The conscience of his film (and audience POV) is esteemed Japanese legend Tatsuya Nakadai who is certainly no stranger to tearing down legends and picking at newly made scabs. While contemporary Toshiro Mifune made over thirty movies building up and championing the honorific exploits of the samurai, Nakadai's cool, collected work in Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri (1962) single- handedly obliterated all the legends. While Kill! is comparatively light, employing a kick'em-while-they're-down mentality, its arguably much more fun to watch than Harakiri.Combining exciting swordplay, crackling dialogue, absurd humor and sly references and take-downs of other films (including as especially Kurosawa's Sanjuro (1962)), Kill! is a brilliant and fun little film. It offers interesting and complex characters and a story that confounds and confuses though in the same way 1968 confounded and confused the world. Before declaring 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), If.... (1968) and/or Night of the Living Dead (1968) the most radical film/s of the sixties, check out Kill! and tell me you're not at least delighted.

With all its dark humor and cynical attitude towards samurai code of honor, Kill! comes as a truly unformulaic and genre-bending period drama. Written and directed by the famous Kihachi Okamoto, the film's loosely based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's widely read short story Peaceful Days (also the basis for Kurosawa's Sanjuro). Kill! (or Kiru in Japanese) combines a well-crafted, complex plot with audaciously choreographed fight scenes, some visually-stunning, long shots of Japanese landscapes, with a bunch of witty - and often farcical - dialogues.The picture presents a story about two luckless, hungry would-be warriors, who find themselves in the middle of a ferocious battle between the opposing sides of a dangerous yakuza clan. Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a former samurai, who got tired of the difficult lifestyle of a wandering ronin. He wasn't able to find any other work, and just wound up in the deserted city, where he met Hanjiro (Etsushi Takahashi), an ex-farmer who wants to become a samurai, but didn't have a chance to prove his abilities yet. As soon as the two discover that the abandoned city is a battleground for a merciless group of samurai retainers, it's simply too late, and they get dragged into the whole deadly intrigue in just a matter of minutes. It becomes clear that one side of the conflict betrayed the other, and the resolution of the struggle might come only when one of the parties kills the other. In the cutthroat game of murder and betrayal, the two main characters take differing sides, and in order to achieve success they need to kill each other at first. Though Hanjiro's first assignment as an aspiring samurai is to dispose of Genta, he hesitates for a long time, as Genta proved to be a valuable source of information regarding the precious samurai life. As the tension mounts, and both groups become more and more irritated and bloodthirsty, Hanjiro and Genta decide to team up and outsmart everyone in their way, leading on to one of the most riveting and satisfying finales in a samurai picture ever filmed.The problem with Kill! is that it's not as well-known around the world as it really should be. Moreover, it's simply an under-watched samurai epic, even though it actually shares - and makes fun of - all the far-reaching values of many prominent Kurosawa pictures. Here the portrayal of typical samurai warriors is a most parodical one, as Kill! shows so deliberately that there are those, who behave only badly and those, who behave only honorably, and there's nothing in-between. It's a game-changer of sorts when it comes to the topic of samurai, given its highly fanciful attempt at denuding all the hidden aspects of those seemingly convoluted personas.The cinematography is as raw-looking as it is actually picture-perfect. It brings out all that's eye-popping about the beautiful, yet blood-filled, Japanese scenery.Kill! also references various other samurai pictures, playing with the idea of a dramatic and serious samurai film, giving itself an utterly lighthearted tone. Kihachi Okamoto created a little, under-appreciated gem that's not only engaging, but also truly smart and concise.

Take a piece of Akira Kurosawa, blend in a big portion of Sergio Leone, then add a little of Mel Brooks on Xanax and you'll have an idea of one of the oddest and most amusing examples of chanbara satire. The "sword-fighting movies" from Japan nearly collapsed under the weight of clichés, just as American "gun-fighting" westerns nearly bit the dust in the U.S. Kihachi Okamoto piles on the clichés in this tale taken from the same source material as Sanjuro. While elements of the plot are described, it's not the plot that's too important, but what Okamoto does with it. You might have a hard time afterwards watching some of those popular Italian westerns with a straight face (or even some of Kurosawa's eastern westerns). Two ragged men, one a former samurai, Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai), who is disillusioned and has become a wandering yakuza, and the other, Hanji (Etsushi Takahashi), a farmer who wants to become a samurai, meet by chance in a dusty, decaying village. The two suddenly find themselves in the midst of corruption, betrayal and assassination. They wind up fighting rival gangs and, sometimes, each other. Along the way we encounter the loving clichés of samurai flicks as well as the loving clichés from Italian westerns...all that running back and forth, noble love, beatings, the really evil villain...as well as pratfalls, a monk who seems to be channeling William Hickey, a flying finger that lands on the ground right in front of the camera and probably the scrawniest chicken ever to have a major role in the movies. The year is 1833 when Japan's rigid class system was decaying. Tatsuya Nakadai as Genta is marvelous as the quizzical and disillusioned ex-samurai who long ago had enough of the posturing and false honor of his class. He has no intention of being a hero, yet he finds himself against his better judgment being drawn into a clan battle between corruption on one side and naivety on the other. He also is a realist. "Kill or be killed," he says at one point, "either would leave an unpleasant aftertaste." Almost as good is Etsushi Takahashi as Hanji. He may only be a farmer, but Hanji is tired of that back-breaking work. He sold his land and bought a samurai's outfit with the two swords. If he can become a samurai, he knows honor will be close behind. Hanji is energetic and impressed with titles. When the two meet, they make an odd-couple team, even if at a various times Hanji is determined to stick a sword through Genta's chest. Two-thirds of the way through the movie, however, Okamoto lets the clichés regain their rightful power. The laughs are few and far between as battles are fought between muskets and swords (the swords lose), a good man dies and a fight to the death takes place between Genta and an evil usurper. We're left with the carnage of dead samurai, caused by betrayal and suspicion..and with Genta's comment to Hanji, "Now do you understand what samurai are like?" Wait, there's more. This is a satire, after all. Our last view is of the two men, one a realist and the other now also a realist, leaving the village. They're followed by the admiring young women of the town's one pleasure house, all determined to journey with them. That leaves the scrawny chicken, strutting around and pecking in the dust, unimpressed with all that has just occurred.

Nothing prepared me for the laughter and all-around entertainment offered by this film. The writer, director and actors manage to have fun with icons of Japanese society (e.g., a card shark priest, an honest bureaucrat who has never visited a brothel, a noble peasant, etc.,) while maintaining a good pace with the swordplay and forward movement of the story line. Nakadai is brilliant as the "been there, done that" samurai, who reveals much of the story's insanity to us through whispered comments and observations. Viewers might need a scorecard to keep track of all the double-crossing and back-firing that takes places, but Kiru is tremendous fun from beginning to end. And it's the only movie I've seen with the ugliest chicken in the world serving as a leitmotiv.