The opening scene is powerful indeed, as the chain-smoking, hard-boiled police officer Hajime Saito ( Yosuke Eguchi, Goemon) confronts the disfigured rogue warrior Makoto Shishio ( Tatsuya Fujiwara, Death Note) in the latter’s self-styled “hell” of lava pits, into which he drops policemen he has kept in captivity. Who would have thought?Īnd Kyoto Inferno‘s first half hour certainly boasts visceral entertainment laced with many a witty comment on the awkward situation as lived by its characters, at an age where samurais are deemed passé and sword-carrying is illegal during the early years of the Meiji Restoration (an era which marks Japan’s transformation from a feudal shogunate into an empire seeking to modernize and industrialize in order to return to level terms with the US and Europe). There’s a lot of posturing, that’s for sure – androgyny is all the hype among Japan’s youth, and Takeru Sato certainly plays this aspect of his to the max in his performance as the titular hero – but these concessions to the comics’ youthful fanbase are also balanced by some contemplation about power play, black ops and the downside of modernity. Making up for its sprawling moments, Kyoto Inferno (and The Legend Ends) merits attention for its cinematic sheen, with Otomo managing to conjure darker atmospherics that the manga and its anime adaptations could hardly ever attain. While the response (in terms of box-office traction) has largely been positive, the two films could easily be tightened through a merged exportable version – something many an Asian martial arts genre film has gone through in the past with King Hu’s A Touch of Zen and John Woo’s Red Cliff.
Kyoto Inferno and its follow-up, the aptly-titled The Legend Ends, were released in Japan on Aug. Read More Japan Box Office: ‘Apes’ Opens Behind Samurai Film As a result, filler material abounds as the plot grinds on very slowly, with some meticulously choreographed swordfights dragging on forever and the cartoonish villains hamming it up like there’s no tomorrow. In line with many a franchise seeking to capitalize on its popularity by stretching its presence as much as possible – thank you, the number-crunching minds behind The Matrix, Harry Potter and Twilight – Rurouni Kenshin‘s producers have elected to break the series’ grand finale into two back-to-back films (each of them clocking in at way over the two-hour mark). Somehow, it’s also another set of modern values – that of the 21st century commercial film industry, that is – which pose problems for Otomo and his screenwriter, Kiyomi Fujii.
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Loyal at least to the spirit from its source material – the subtitle of Watuski’s comic-book series translates as “the romantic tales of a Meiji-era swordsman” – the Rurouni Kenshin films are all about their protagonist’s moral dilemmas as he struggles to reconcile his past as a cold-blooded killing machine with new personal and political circumstances, with Japan’s new ruling elite ushering in supposedly modern social values and structures. Then again, the strength of Keishi Otomo‘s adaptations of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s wildly-popular samurai manga – the first of which was released amid fanfare, favorable reviews and ringing tills two years ago – has never been blockbuster-level pyrotechnics. What Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno provides as its climax is just villains rolling a three-story-high juggernaut of burning haystacks down a lackluster street of low-rises. First: those who expect swordsmen fighting to the death as Japan’s old imperial capital goes up in VFX-assisted flames, prepare to be disappointed.
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