Zatoichi (1989)

16 years after the final film version and 10 years after the TV series (1974-1979), Shintaro Katsu decided to make a final encore for Zatoichi with Zatoichi (1989). Many of the standard Zatoichi tropes are visited as expected: the dice hustle, the cutting of a candle with the sword, rolling into a fight in a barrel, kids telling Zato to move to miss a hole and ignoring them and falling into it, saving a damsel in distress among others. However, Katsu does allow Zaotichi to have a love scene-something that I think he only had one occasion to do in the original 25 films. There is the usual conflict between two yakuza gangs that is solved by Zaotichi at the closing. This one is the goriest to date with squirting blood, decapitated corpses, limbs being hacked off, and even a nose is splattered against a wall. There is a subplot of yakuza pawning off inferior firearms to rivals in order to get money and in order to more easily take over their territory when the guns misfire and they easily subdue them. Ken Ogata stars as the philosophical, respected duelist who has a chance to slay Zatoichi early, but allows him to live so that they can meet in a more fair occasion, but Zatoich  barely stops to slay him at the end. This film clocks in at 116 minutes and feels longer, the usual Zatocihi film was a lean 90 minutes or less and I think it is more suited for that short and sweet length. I find this film less than necessary, but I was curious to see what Katsu had in store for his final Zatoichi film. Next I'll re-watch Takeshi Kitano's 2003 reboot.