Bushidô zankoku monogatari

What a shame that an excellent film like this is languishing away with not even 200 votes.

I happen to think that the two nations with the richest film cultures are the French, and the Japanese. Both have multiple examples of excellence in every decade, in every genre. I say this to show my admiration for Japanese cinema writ large. I've seen around 250 Japanese pictures, and "Bushido..." is in my top ten.

I'm not going to get into plot points and things like that. I'm simply going to say that this is a knock-out picture, and a hell of an indictment of the injustices of the samurai era. It features an excellent central performance by Kinnosuke Nakamura (playing a number of different characters over many generations of one family's struggles).

I've only seen this film and "Aduachi" aka Revenge, (which is above average for sure, but not as great as "Bushisdo..."), so to me Imai is a director to keep exploring.