Critic Reviews

Directing with an old-fashioned tenderness toward his unassuming star, Ken Ochiai conjures a swan song to a waning art form and those who practice it.

Drenched in nostalgia, this loving tribute to the unsung heroes of cinema has immense appeal.

It’s Fukumoto’s wonderfully weathered countenance that makes Ochiai’s film such an elegiac delight. On it, you can see the entire history of samurai cinema, or at least that essential part of it that died often, and beautifully so.