We’ve seen the Shogun Assassin take on armies before, using wits, cunning, a carriage filled with traps, and sword skills unmatched by any other. However, the new film from Takashi Miike, Oštrica Besmrtnog, sees a samurai who can’t die taking on an army of eccentric assassins, mercenaries, ninja warriors, and soldiers in an all out fight to avenge the death of a young girl’s father.
Miike has been slowly honing his craft as an auteur, finding more traditional ways to reach audiences with his sometimes aberrant themes. He really nailed home a near masterpiece with the flick 13 Ubojice, which was a fantastic film that was a big nod to the traditional samurai flicks from the yesteryears.
Miike’s upcoming film, Oštrica Besmrtnog, is based on the manga about a girl who seeks out a troubled and despondent immortal who also happens to be a samurai. The scarred and world-weary warrior ends up helping the girl seek vengeance against the men who killed her father. And so, the adventure begins. You can check out the trailer below, courtesy of Kinocheck Međunarodni.
It’s a bloody-gory movie, the likes of which happen to be a staple of nearly all of Miike’s films.
One of the biggest drawbacks to his previous flicks is that usually the choreography wasn’t always that strong. That was fixed with 13 Ubojice, where we saw some good wide angle shots that gave us a nice steady view of the sword-clashing action. In some of his previous films, Miike had the tendency of short-changing the editing of the fight or action sequences, focusing more on the concept of the violence rather than the violence itself.
This definitely reminds me of the flick Shinobi: Srce pod oštricom or Goemon, two other fantasy-oriented flicks set during a similar period between historical fiction and the supernatural. Visually the movie reminds me a little bit of Keishi Ohtomo’s live-action adaption of Rurouni Kenshin, and unsurprisingly Warner Bros., is once again helping with distribution.
They don’t have a release date on the film but it’s set to come out soon.
