Set during the tumultuous mid-19th century Edo period of Japan, Killing is the story of a masterless samurai or ronin named Ikematsu Sosuke. As the prevalent peace and tranquility are sure to be replaced by war and conflict across the land the swordsman feels restlessness creep upon him.
When you hear such promising words like "Shinya Tsukamoto's first samurai film", it's hard not to get a little misty-eyed. I've gushed enough over the director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man in the past so let's just say I was ecstatic when I heard he was working on a jidaigeki film. Apparently it was something he always had wanted to do so it could be seen as somewhat of a dream project of his. It's a fairly short affair, clocking in at barely 1 hour and 20 minutes, but Tsukamoto takes his time portraying every aspect of his samurai story with two warrior's clashing morals, the unstoppable need for revenge and sacrificing one's personal code of justice in the name of someone else's bloodlust.
Tsukamoto has spoken about how he wanted the small cuts from the sword to feel very real and not just be beautiful slashes like you would see in the classics, and early on I personally thought he achieved that when a characters hand gets cut open and it looks realistic and painful as hell. Killing (a.k.a. Zan) proves to be an interesting, slightly gory new way for Tsukamoto to express his wonderfully insane self.
Genre: Action/Drama
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