In this deadpan parody of Japan's then-popular samurai film genre, Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai) puts down his samurai sword to become a freelance criminal. Meanwhile, Hanjiro (Etsushi Takahashi) is a poor struggling farmer who yearns for the power and respect being a samurai would bring him. Entering a sleepy village where a civil war is raging within the local ruling clan due to the machinations of the wily Ayuzama (Shigeru Kôyama), the pair of swordsmen must choose sides and fight. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, Kill! playfully tweaks samurai film convention, borrowing elements from established chanbara classics and seasoning them with a little Italian western.
"Kill! is an entertaining and unusual take on the samurai/swordplay genre that plays for laughs many of the conventional tropes and set-ups common in the classic films from that tradition."--David Blakeslee. Read more of Blakeslee take: https://criterioncast.com/column/reflections/criterion-reflections-kill-1968-313
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In Japanese with English subtitles.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdxxCijpINw&feature=youtu.be
