15 Most Underrated Samurai Films Of All Time
4. The Twilight Samurai (2002)
Another entry in Yoji Yamada’s Samurai Trilogy, 2002’s The Twilight Samurai is the first instalment that proceded The Hidden Blade. Like the latter entry, this film is based on a short story by Shûhei Fujisawa.
Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award and winning 12 Japanese Academy Awards, this gorgeous historical drama centres itself on low-ranking and impoverished samurai Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada). Working in a grain warehouse, the scruffily dressed Seibei makes a point of rushing home before evening to look after his daughters and elderly mother - hence his nickname "Twilight". Like The Hidden Blade, this entry is just as methodically paced with excruciating attention to the details of mundane life, which may sound unappealing to some.
However, after a tense duel reveals Seibei to be a skilled fighter, the narrative soon pick up as our protagonist is thrown into a whirlwind of change. And thanks to the time and effort Yamanda pours in to establishing the situation at hand, the violence is coupled with a weighty sense of dread and consequence.