Working in 3D but showing even greater classical restraint than he did in 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike has remade Masaki Kobayashi's famous indictment of feudal inhumanity by returning to its source (a story by Yasuhiko Takiguchi) and amplifying its clash between the values of military and civilian life. Edo is peaceful under the Shogun, and many former samurai are now unemployed, impoverished ronin. Some, in desperation, approach noble houses and request permission to commit ritual suicide on their premises, secretly hoping to be bought off. The story opens with the ronin Hanshiro petitioning the House of Ii in exactly this way; instead of paying him to go away, the unsympathetic clan lord Kageyu (Koji Yakusho, a bad guy this time) recounts the gruesome fate of the last ronin who came with that request, a young man named Motome. But Hanshiro is actually Motome's father-in-law, and he has actually come to the House of Ii to exact revengeÖ Miike and his composer Ryuichi Sakamoto are not the men to get nostalgic for a lost 'golden age' of Japanese cinema. This chiaroscuro reimagining of 17th-century Japan is as fresh and vivid as anything Miike has ever done.

Tony Rayns