Kiru aka Kill! (1968) - Kihachi Okamoto

A weak drifter enters a barren town, burnt to the ground, streets abandoned, and everywhere is a howling wind. He hasn't eaten for five days and has been walking because he hears there might be a job for a ronin. He has one dream, and that's to become a samurai, he's sold his land for swords, but in the meantime he'll be happy with a bite to eat. This is how we see Tabata (Etsushi Takahashi). He runs into another man with a similar motive, except he was looking to join the yakuza's, who up until two months ago were rooted in the village.
They encounter a samurai and each go their own way, but of course they wind up intersecting paths throughout. Tabata is the first person we see and we naturally assume he'll be the focus of the story, but as it progresses and more characters are introduced it becomes Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai) who becomes the most important. He is a vagrant, and is quickly dismissed by the samurai who feel too proud and superior to him. However Genta is a former samurai and he quit because he was sick of the way samuari lived their life. This is possibly the first film that really attacks the ideology of a samurai. Sure other films have debated unquestioning obedience and misguided honor, but this is the first film that deliberately says being a samurai isn't honorable, it isn't something you should strive for, and that the myths of these men are undeserving.
It is a myth-debunking film just as Unforgiven worked on the same level for the Western. Whereas that film made killing a much more emotional task than other Westerns, this film focuses more on the samurai as heroes. Here they aren't, they are people who are quick to be betrayed, and frequently for no good reason. If one person stands in the way, send 7 men to kill him, and then kill the 7 so that they can't rebel. When you first hear of the 7 hiding out on the hill you suddenly get visions of a brilliant stand off and a triumph for the gallant warriors in the way of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, however these men on the hill aren't quite as heroic. They are fine as long as there are no women, but when the leader's fiance comes to them, and the men find liqour, their fortune begins to change. The focus isn't even on them. Genta is helping them for strange reasons. He was loyal to his samurai cause once before, and it disgusted him, so by helping these men who don't even ask for his help, he's repaying a debt from a long time ago. It is a buddhist interpretation of karma, and this good deed can help to cover his tracks for his previous weakness.
All Genta did in the past however was do as he was told. He only questioned the ethics of it when it was too late. The samurai here are in horrible shape and have no unity whatsoever. A group of trainee's are sent to the mountain with the promise of becoming samurai if they kill the seven men, but at the same time their boss sends 30 men with guns and bows up there. The trained archers and riflemen don't even care who they shoot, the lives of these farmers/peasants turned ronin are worthless, like a yakuza it isn't worth more than a worm. They wind up killing two of their own men for just being in a line of fire, which is more damage than they do to the men holding up in the mountain.
Along the way Tabata begins to question his own quest, he has figured that perhaps being a samurai isn't all he thought it would be, but he's had the dream for too long to just instantly abandon it. He does some soul searching, and when he finally comes to Genta's aid you have a feeling that he's certainly on the right path, making the ending of the film one somewhat comical as well as appropriate.

Grade B-