Rurouni Kenshin Part II: Kyoto Inferno

The second film in the trilogy adapted from the Rurouni Kenshin comic. Kenshin is a swordsman who worked as an assassin during the revolutionary period. He then stopped killing and began carrying a blade with a reversed edge. In this film he faces the assassin who came before him: Shishio, a man the government burned and who did not die. Now he wants to bring the state down. At the centre is Kenshin's principle: he swore not to kill, and his opponent uses that as a weakness. The fights are what the film is known for. The choreography is fast, the cutting sparse, and the actors do most of it themselves; swordplay on this scale was not usual in Japanese live-action cinema. Keishi Otomo directed. The second and third films were shot back to back and released in the same year. Takeru Satoh plays Kenshin. This film does not complete the story; the narrative ends in the third. One of the stronger examples of its kind for anyone who likes Japanese action cinema and comic adaptations. For a viewer looking for a film to watch on its own, this instalment both leans on the previous one and does not reach an ending.