Ichi Film Review

This is a rather enjoyable throwback to the Chambara pulp films of the 1960s. If it had been, it likely would have become a series - Ichi the Blind Swordswoman. Clearly inspired by Zatoichi but let's not forget the Crimson Bat series - four films with Oichi the blind swordswoman who sliced her way from town to town. The director Fumihiko Sori (the wonderful Ping Pong) clearly has a soft spot for those films and brings in bits and pieces of them to this. Ichi (one in Japanese) is a blind female once belonging to the Goze. The Goze was a real thing - organizations of blind women who were generally musicians and occasionally masseurs. They lasted from the early 1600s till the 1800's. They had one rule - celibacy. If you took up with a man or as here raped, you had to leave the organization and wander. They wanted no one to link them to prostitution. Ichi is in a sense a ronin Goze.

Ichi (played by Haruka Ayase, just recently viewed in Lily's Revolver) is a wandering Goze but with a mission. To look for her father who was also blind but had taught her swordsmanship before he disappeared. He taught her the drawing of the sword (laido) which makes her so deadly. Her caretakers taught her how to play the shamisen and sing. Like Zatoichi and the Crimson Bat, her other senses are always on high alert. In a gambling den she can hear how the dice land within the cup - an old Zatoichi trick. And when a fish bites the bait. But she is empty inside - "I don't know what I don't cut" - unable to love - only knows brutality from men - only wanting to find her father.

When three thugs want to rape her, Toma (Takao Osawa) a wanderer as well tries to intervene and stop them. But he has laido impotence - because of a childhood incident he is literally unable to draw his sword from the scabbard. Not sure what Freud would say but since the incident had to do with his mother, I can guess. He is about to be killed when Ichi appears and within seconds the three thugs are dead. An exhilarating moment. Toma decides to tag along - but the film takes a turn into comedy when she later kills five men from the Banki Gang - a group of degenerates headed by the one-eyed scarred Banki (Shidô Nakamura). Everyone but a young boy assumes that Toma killed them and think he is a master swordsman. Shi tells the boy to say nothing and Toma is almost too embarrassed to say anything.

Much of the rest of the film plays out like one of those old pulp films - a few nice action scenes - but in an odd and unexpected choice, it is Toma who has to face Banki in the final big fight as Ichi hobbles to get there. If it had been Zatoichi, he would have killed them all. Haruka plays Ichi as completely emotionless - often the camera dwells on her lovely face and she only stares straight ahead. Perhaps giving her more personality would have drawn the viewer in more. As I mentioned above, the director helmed Ping Pong, a film I love - but one might wish that this had been directed by those old-time directors like Kenji Misumi or Kimiyoshi Yasuda. Their films looked so rich in detail and color while the cinematography here has little zip to it. Still, I would have been happy with Further Adventures of Ichi.