Saw The Sword of Doom, a morbid samurai film about this ecil swordsman who just keeps killing! It starts out with him killing an old pilgrim who is praying at a remote shrine for a peaceful death. Later on he kills a guy during a sparring match because the guy was coming at him with deadly force. The film is set in a kind of perpetual winter and the anti-hero protagonist stalks through the village in a black cloak. Although he kills a lot, his morality is kept kind of grey. His various murders are always somehow defensible but he's clearly sinking deeper and deeper into a murder-based lifestyle. Eventually, he joins up with some kind of special-forces assassin's unit to make murder his full-time job. At home he drinks and threatens is wife and grimly practices his Kubrick stare.
The film was intended to be part one of a three-part trilogy, so it ends extremely abruptly and without much closure. The protagonist seems very wicked but he's humanized here and there by his guilt over his actions and by his moral grey-ness. His fighting style is even pointed out to be a patient waiting for his opponent to attack and then striking them dead. He would not kill if his opponents did not wish him dead, this seems to imply. But then a lot of footage is devoted to making us hate him.
The film is also shot very starkly, the contrast turned way up to give us only blacks and whites, with little grey. This is perhaps ironic since we would like to think that the protagonist could be redeemed, or that his evil ways will be punished and while these things happen a little in the film, it ends too quickly for me to feel satisfied. A frustrating film, but interesting in its wickedness. It's sort of fun to watch a villain stalk about.
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