Director: Takashi
Miike
Notable Cast: Takuya
Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Sota Fukushi, Hayato Ichihara, Erika Toda, Kazuki
Kitamura, Chiaki Kuriyama, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Ichikawa Ebizo XI, Min
Tanaka, Tsutomu Yamazaki
As it was very well publicized in the US as a marketing ploy
for the film, Blade of the Immortal
marks the 100th film by Takashi Miike (which, for the record and at
the time of this review, he’s now in post-production of his 102nd
film although that’s certainly a debatable number entirely based on the credits
themselves, but I digress) and it’s fitting that this film would mark his
transition into the triple digits. It’s not because Blade of the Immortal is his best film. When a dynamic director
such as this gets to 100 films of such diversity it’s hard to make claims of what’s
his ‘best’ simply due to the ground he has covered, but this film feels like
one that’s decently consumable on a mass scale yet still feels like it pulls
aspects from a lot of his various films for its execution too. It’s like a
greatest hits of style and pieces of his long and illustrious career wrapped
into one massively entertaining spectacle. While that sounds like perhaps the
film is watered down overall, Blade of
the Immortal is not. It’s a film that takes a rather simple core structure
and builds a world of characters and gimmicks around it that never ceases to
entertain and draw the audience into their lives. This is Miike at some of his
most lavishly entertaining and it’s a celebration of his style that serves as a
declaration of his continued momentum towards being one of the most ambitiously
prolific directors ever in any worldly film market.