Unmythic contribution to the classic Japanese martial-arts genre. It skimps on action and piles up, instead, the domestic problems of a modest master swordsman of the mid-19th Century, widowed, deep in debt, burdened with a senile mother, two little girls to raise, tattered clothes, and b.o. An assassination assignment in the final quarter of the film ("Bring me the head of Zenemon Yogo") restores a modicum of dignity. The calm, measured, sure-footed style of veteran director Yoji Yamada (forty-odd films, alone, about the "lovable tramp" known as Tora-san) has a dignity of its own. Hiroyuki Sanada, Rie Miyazawa. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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