‘The Samurai and the Prisoner’ Review: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Samurai Murder-Mystery Needs a Sharper Blade
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest film, 'The Samurai and the Prisoner,' is a 16th-century mystery-drama set in a Japanese castle during a siege. The film explores themes of morality and decision-making through the character of samurai Araki Murashige, who grapples with the consequences of his choices. While the film is rich in historical context, its pacing and plotting have been criticized for being tedious.
- ▪The film is an adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa's 2021 novel.
- ▪Araki Murashige, the protagonist, is a legendary samurai known for rebelling against Oda's army in 1578.
- ▪The story features a series of mini whodunnits as Murashige consults a strategist to solve a murder within the castle.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Invoked several times across his anomalous new feature, a curious but plodding 16th century mystery-drama set within the walls of a Japanese castle as Nobunaga Oda’s army closes in on it, the Buddhist phrase “advance to paradise, retreat into hell” contains a backwards logic that has been adopted by the characters in any number of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films. From “Cure” to “Creepy” and all sorts of dark places in between, the Japanese auteur has crystallized the abstract horrors of the modern world by rendering their shared tendency towards accelerationism — by unflinchingly observing how the greatest threats to our survival are driven by the impulse to push forward (and faster) in the face of a crisis, rather than rethink the source of our collective unrest.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at IndieWire.
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