¡°Bushido¡± is veteran director Kazuya Shiraishi¡¯s first samurai period drama, but like his acclaimed 2018 cops-versus-yakuza action movie ¡°The Blood of Wolves,¡± the film is a lovingly conceived and meticulously executed throwback that revitalizes the genre.
The earlier film was inspired by Kinji Fukasaku¡¯s gritty 1970s ¡°Battles Without Honor and Humanity¡± series that exposed the hollowness of the traditional gang code. ¡°Bushido,¡± which is based on a famous rakugo (comic storytelling) tale, similarly recalls old-school samurai swashbucklers, complete with top-knotted heroes out for justice and revenge. It¡¯s thus closer in theme to the films of a populist entertainer like Masahiro Makino (the ¡°Jirocho¡± series) than a genre deconstructionist like Masaki Kobayashi, whose ronin protagonist in his 1962 masterpiece ¡°Harakiri¡± is more viscerally desperate than conventionally noble. Even so, ¡°Bushido¡± shares some of the scathing critique found in ¡°Harakiri¡± of a feudal society rife with cruelty and corruption.
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