Manji, a samurai warrior of great skill, kills a mob of swordsmen who murdered his little sister. Fatally wounded in the encounter, an enchantress slips him magical bloodworms that repair any wound. Forced to live when he’d far rather die, he is in a shack outside of town when a girl looking much like his sister approaches him. Her father has been murdered and her mother raped and abducted by the members of a new fencing school. The girl wants revenge and the grumpy warrior eventually signs on to help. This leads to a lot of duels and a lot of blood. Allegiances switch and everyone ends up fighting everyone till the body count begins to make one wonder if there is a single adult male left alive in Edo.
What if Wolverine was a samurai warrior? That’s what we have in cult director Takashi Miike’s 100th film. Based on a manga, the characterizations aren’t layered and the story is simple. Each warrior wears a weird outfit or has a distinctive hair style or uses an unlikely weapon. And people do really stupid things—particularly children. And we get a lot of gore. Which is pretty much the point. Blood streams and splatters and limbs go flying. And no one, even the people who can grow back a hand, seem all that troubled when they lose a body part.
Between the fights—and there are a lot of fights—the lightly drawn characters ramble about revenge and death which was of no interest to me and I doubt to anyone else. It’s better when it is coming from the grouchy warrior than the kid I’d like to have died early on. But no one making the film cared who was saying what. Conversations are filler in a film that didn’t need filler. Anything that isn’t combat doesn’t matter.
As for the combat, it is exciting and bloody and fun. And then it is a little less exciting, but bloodier, and not so much fun. And then it is monotonous and dripping and unpleasant. It gets a bit more enjoyable at the end, but this movie is 140 minutes long. 140 MINUTES. For a film where the plot is, people chop up other people, this is way, way too long. At 90 minutes (including credits), I’d have been smiling at the end. A 70 min version would have been great with a couple beers and fried cheese. But this thing wore me down. The only way to really enjoy Blade of the Immortal is to leave half way through.