A Hidden Blade Repeat Viewing

A few days ago I was talking to Car about Samurai Movies in general after she'd gotten her Father both "Twilight Samurai" and "13 Assassins" for his birthday, to great success! I was talking about some well-done and realistically paced sword fight that I'd seen in some samurai movie, but couldn't remember which one it was. All I remembered was that it ended up with the protagonist with his arm hacked almost clean off, a gory end, to be sure!

Figuring in the time-frame that I must have seen it in, I guessed that it was probably the 2004 movie "The Hidden Blade" that had the duel I was thinking about, and later that day, wanting to make sure, I popped the movie in to check it out. Well, in turns out that the Hidden Blade WASN'T the movie I was thinking of, but it was great that I got to re-watch it, because MY GOSH, I FORGOT how frickin' GOOD it was!

Starring Masatoshi Nagase as a semi-retired Samurai named Katagiri and adorable and cute Matsu Takako as his live-in maid servant Kie, this movie was more about his adjustment to a world without samurai as well as coming to terms with his feelings for the sweet Kie than your regular "slice-n-dice" samurai action flick.

Though there aresome great sword fighting scenes, my favorite scenes are when it's just Katagiri taking care of Kie when she is ill, or Kie taking care of him like a doting wife. Such a touching film, it's sometimes hard to remember it's a SAMURAI movie!

PS: Turns out the movie I was looking for from before was none other than the Kimura Takuya/Dan Rei movie Bushi To Ichibun: Love and Honor that featured that intense fight scene, another great movie that I'll have to re-watch as well!