Kill!

Two men enter an abandoned town: a starving drifter who gave up being a samurai, and a farmer who wants to become one. Seven young men who killed a corrupt official are besieged there. Both get involved for different reasons. Kihachi Okamoto directed. Tatsuya Nakadai plays the drifter, Etsushi Takahashi the farmer. The source is a story by Shugoro Yamamoto, the same text that underlay Kurosawa's Sanjuro. Okamoto takes the material from the opposite direction. The attitude is open genre mockery: heroism, loyalty and honour are ridiculed throughout and the fights deliberately carry comic elements. Nakadai's character is the opposite of the classical samurai type: hungry, sardonic and believing in no cause. The cinematography is built on wide framing and clouds of dust; the town looks almost like a western set. Who it is for: viewers who like samurai cinema and genre parody. Who it is not for: anyone expecting serious samurai drama; the film proceeds as a joke throughout.