Goyokin (1969)
[director Hideo Gosha]
Cast: Tatsua Nakadai, Kinnosuke Nakamura
Perhaps the makers of Die Hard used Hideo Gosha’s landmark samurai movie as a blueprint. In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that it is essentially an action film (possibly the best ever), Goyokin goes far beyond its genre aspirations and emerges as an important film about honor and the folly of blind loyalty.
A samurai, Magobei (played brilliantly by Kurosawa’s favorite supporting actor, Tatsuya Nakadai), returns to face the clan he abandoned when he learns that they intend to instigate another massacre akin to the earlier one that caused him to resign his position and leave the clan. Protecting the last survivor of that massacre, a woman called “Taken by the Gods” Oriha, Magobei absorbs a truly phenomenal amount of punishment before taking down his brother-in-law, the clan leader, in one of cinema’s truly epic sword duels. In many ways Gosha intended Goyokin to shock genre fans: Magobei’s hands are frozen before the final fight, and his wife thaws them by pressing them against her breasts, warming Magobei so that he can fight with and kill her brother. And it almost seems that Magobei suffers the amazing abuse that he does as a way of atoning for the sins of his clan. Many of Gosha’s later films would also deal with this idea of the one bearing out the sins of the many.
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