Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

Almost since Hollywood started making Westerns they have borrowed and remade Japanese classic Samurai films - Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' becoming 'The Magnificent Seven' for instance. It is very appropriate, then, that there is a Japanese Samurai remake of one of the finest Hollywood Westerns - Clint Eastwood's late classic 'Unforgiven' being given the Samurai treatment here.

The story is the same; Ken Watanabe plays Jubei who has gone into hiding after the close of the Shogun era, but comes out for the reward offered by a group of prostitutes. 'But the plot is just a framework on which director Lee Sang-il and his scriptwriters hang many fascinating ideas: about the country's treatment of its indigenous Ainu people, about the shift from feudalism to 'freedom', and of course – as with any great western – about the rules and ramifications of violence. Unexpectedly brilliant' - Tom Huddleston, Time Out.