Had it been distributed widely and marketed properly, Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal might have been a considerable art house hit. An epic in the Akira Kurosawa tradition, Blade features thrilling action sequences, three-dimensional characters, and long-gestating passages of suspense. Unfortunately it screened here only twice as part of the Chicago International Film Festival, and it never received a full run. It’s now available on DVD and BluRay, so viewers who missed it at CIFF can catch up with this grandly entertaining action fantasy.
After the prologue, Immortal jumps forward 50 years to a martial arts school outside of Tokyo. A roving band of swordsmen called the Itto-ryo attack the school one night, killing all the instructors and taking the director’s wife captive. (This is part of the Itto-ryo’s larger plan to conquer all the schools, or dojos, and unify all martial arts instruction under their authoritative leadership.) Rin, the director’s preteen daughter, survives, vowing revenge on the men who killed her family. She tracks down Manji, now living as a hermit in a secluded glen, and begs him to guide her in her quest. Manji accepts, mainly because she resembles his long-dead sister (they’re played by the same actress, Hana Sugisaki), but he makes clear that revenge will not come easily. It requires not just physical training, but moral preparation— though he’s killed many men, Manji asserts that it’s never easy to take a life.
