Critic Reviews

In a sense, this is Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” one of the other Kurosawa’s unequivocal masterpieces, and it earns that comparison in every way.

“Samurai” is classical, if pared-back, in approach — at once a satisfyingly linked series of rousing whodunnits, a tricksy game of mental cat-and-mouse and a trenchant, often rather moving, exploration of the nature of true leadership, in all its solitude and sacrifice.

There’s an openness to Muragishe (symbolized by his hobby as a diligent tea master and tea urn collector) that Kurosawa admires, something fairly rare in his dark, disorientating filmography. It’s this admiration—not to mention the film’s patience and detail—that makes The Samurai And The Prisoner a delightful detour for the genre master.

While not his finest film of his career (or even this year, that would be Chime), Kurosawa continues to prove himself as a vital contemporary master of the craft that explores the essential fabric of his past and present in order to understand the future that is coming.

In each mesmerizing move of the camera or precisely-framed shot, he draws us in closer and closer until we can practically feel the grass under our feet while he simultaneously keeps his sharp eye on the bigger picture.

It’s a handsomely mounted piece that leans more towards psychological warfare than the sword-based bloodshed that fans of Kurosawa’s previous work might expect.

Much as its main character tries to untangle seemingly impossible conundrums, viewers of The Samurai and the Prisoner will find themselves leaning in and working hard to discern the film’s intriguing details. It’s not a task for those who look to cinema as an escape, requiring aggressive attention from its audience, as all worthwhile art should.

The film tells a story that will probably be familiar to anyone who grew up in Japan. It then takes that classic narrative and adds a few new twists, as well as a decidedly anti-war message that seems to be speaking to our time as well.

The Samurai and the Prisoner offers a master class in framing and blocking, with Kurosawa Kiyoshi continually finding new ways to render the story’s self-contained setting as a source of rich visual pleasure.

Tedious in its plotting but rich in its temporal frictions, this ultra-faithful adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s 2021 novel embraces the time-honored traditions of its form with an eye toward subverting them by the end, an approach that proves apt — if not always satisfying — in the context of a story about a samurai who’s struggling to determine if he should do the same.