Goyôkin

Spaghetti chanbara. The affinity between samurai and western genres is well-known and proven many times (after all, there is no need to go far for examples; see some of Gosha's previous works or many western remakes of chanbara classics), but perhaps never before has there been such a pure-blooded samurai movie that is also so very "spaghetti". The camera work, the music, the protagonist… everything but the setting is a typical spaghetti western. And despite the sometimes strange composition of scenes and unnecessarily intense drums playing at the end, it is an excellent spaghetti western in which Gosha is truly enjoying compositions full of endless icy plains whipped by the wind, downpours, mud and snowy wastes by a stormy sea. Everything is rounded off with a delicious final reckoning which is enriched by a whiff of reality unprecedented in genre films: rubbing hands together to warm them up during a duel. (18/03/2013)