First off, I'm not sure if there's been a thread about this. If I've missed it, pls direct me to it and I'll shutup.
Zatoichi (or Zato Ichi) was a comic book character - a blind swordsman who posed as a masseur, a gambler, who wandered the countryside. He was a master swordsman, the best alive.
The movie itself... acting - most of the acting was terrible. Its going to sound racist and harsh, but its like a lot of japanese movies, at least the cheap ones.
Characters were as thin as paper, despite the attempts to show motivation etc.
Storyline was.... pretty pathetic really.
Action: Hm... pretty much the bloodiness of Kill Bill, though not quite so comedy like as that. It doesn't really follow any of the conventions these days eg. the 'showdown' sword fight ended in 5 seconds after it began. Kinda a letdown.
It had some interesting points - Zatoichi himself was ok, there was a little bit of Zen (not worth watching for though) and there was some interesting music which tied in with the rythm of extras in the background, digging in fields etc.
The thing which was really wierd, was that after the storyling was all over, just before the end, there was a general conglomeration of all teh good characters who joined in synchronised japanese line tap-dancing... kinda wierd.
So yes...
