Your Company
 

The Hidden Blade(隠し剣 鬼の爪)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Japan · 2004
Rated R · 2h 12m
Director Yoji Yamada
Starring Masatoshi Nagase, Takako Matsu, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Yukiyoshi Ozawa
Genre Drama, Romance

Set in 19th Century Japan a young samurai who finds himself in love with a farm girl leaves his home to begin a new life. He has to take stock of his new life when he is put to the test and ordered to kill a traitor who just happens to be his dearest friend.

Stream The Hidden Blade

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

70

The New York Times by

Though less powerful than Mr. Yamada's "Twilight Samurai" (2002), The Hidden Blade is an affecting portrait of the impact of profound change on people with limited options.

70

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

It's a sensitive, slow-moving 19th century samurai drama that will appeal to that tiny cadre of filmgoers who savor the classic Japanese films of Mizoguchi and Inagaki.

88

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Casually paced and filled with telling detail, Yamada's delicate drama with swordplay (there's not much, but what there is packs an emotional wallop) transcends its specific setting in its depiction of Katagiri's internal struggle.

80

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Yamada's decidedly undazzling yet expressive filmmaking approaches classicism, from a sensei training session captured in one lengthy shot to the final showdown, seen with shifting points of view that suggest a relativist unease with the cut-and-dried judgments of war culture.

75

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Builds slowly--maybe too slowly--to a mano-a-mano standoff, just like "The Twilight Samurai," and just like the earlier film, the new one presents its climactic swordfight matter-of-factly, with no superheroics and a lot of hesitation.

83

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker

The restrained drama both punctures the mythic ideal of the samurai culture (trained as fighters, they mostly serve as clan bureaucrats) and spins a romantic portrait of one man who values principle over protocol despite the cost to his reputation.

63

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Bears more than a passing resemblance in story and form to "The Twilight Samurai," but stands on its own as a pleasant, if unremarkable, romance.

Users who liked this film also liked