The Tragedy of Fate: Hunter in the Dark (1979) Review

Director: Hideo Gosha

Notable Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoshio Harada, Keiko Kishi, Ayumi Ishida, Makoto Fujita, Sonny Chiba, Isao Natsuyagi, Kayo Matsuo, Ai Kanzaki, Tatsuo Umemiya, Hajime Hana, Tetsuro Tamba, Koji Takusho

 

It’s a simple shot, towards the end of Hideo Gosha’s late-70s chanbara epic Hunter in the Dark, that really encapsulates the director's artistry and his take on various genres. A young woman sits leaning over a gravely injured lover. Not to spoil too much about the scene, but it’s a classic sequence where she begs him to get up, not to die, and he responds in the well-trodden “go, you need to go” kind of sacrificial statements. Truthfully, it’s not the best-written scene; it’s carried by two incredibly strong performances, but then Gosha does what Gosha does. He shoots it while slowly pulling the camera back, encircling the two characters in their square of light as the blackness around them grows, slowly shrinking the scene as it plays out until it's barely a fifth of the screen. By the end of it, it’s two characters, bared to the truth, both in denial about their respective places, and they are completely boxed in by the blackness around them.

I cried. Full on, tears down the face, cried. 

 

That’s because Gosha understood the assignment. He almost always does. While the story of Hunter in the Dark is a fairly traditional period-piece sword flick, with enough political intrigue to keep its characters on their toes and action set pieces enough to keep the narrative pulsating forward towards its inevitable, and often tragic, climax, Gosha paints it like a Greek tragedy. Fate is an unstoppable force that often devours all, where no amount of love, loyalty, scheming, or vengeance can stop it. Sure, the plotting does become a bit convoluted at times with its convenient use of amnesia for its iconic scar-riddled assassin co-lead, played with smoldering intensity by Yoshio Harada, or how the film occasionally ends up fringing into exploitative territory with some of its side characters, but it's all presented with an artistry and self-seriousness (read as: 70s style gritty darkness) that elevates all of it. 

 

Enough so that a basic death scene at the end, a staple of most action filmmaking, utterly and completely destroyed me emotionally. 

 

Still, Hunter in the Dark is remarkably entertaining in its own right, thanks to its layered characters and tragic narrative, and Gosha never hesitates to lean just far enough into the genre to deliver the thrills it needs. The action is incredibly brutal and stylized, with one scene ignited by a shot of a severed hand stuck in the ceiling as it hangs deliriously to the sword embedded in the wood above, and fans of chanbara films will appreciate the late 70s tone to its viciousness even if it always pulls away from the full over-the-top lunacy of films like Lone Wolf and Cub of that era. 

 

It helps that it's a stacked cast, which leans heavily on an underworld boss, played by the now-late Tatsuya Nakadai in one of those roles he simply adds hundreds of layers to, to anchor it and elevate the material right along with Gosha. Sonny Chiba is always an underutilized actor, and even in his role as Big Bad Villain with Big Bad Screen Presence, he adds a remarkable amount of heft to the entire film. Yet, it's the women in the film - Ayumi Ishida, Keiko Kishi, and Kayo Matsuo in particular- that really tend to be the real VIPs here. Sure, we’ve come to expect the best out of the men previously mentioned, but these three women add so much depth and texture to the characters and narrative. Too often in chanbara films, women can be pressed into either doting lovers or femme fatales, but Hunter in the Dark manages to make every female character into a true character to stand alongside their male counterparts, and it, once again, just makes this film soar. 

 

Hunter in the Dark could have been another paint-by-numbers sword swinging period piece actioner, but Gosha and his team truly craft something that rises above its tropes into something emotionally resonant. Its cast is utterly on point, the action is impressively choreographed and executed, and the artistry with which Gosha plays the chess match of its narrative just makes this an undervalued epic of the genre. 

 

Now I’m just anxiously awaiting for the Criterion Collection to release this beast on 4K for my collection so I don’t have to keep rewatching it on the Criterion Channel. 

 

Written By Matt Malpica Reifschneider