Zatôichi no uta ga kikoeru / Zatoichi's Vengeance (1966) - This isn't a tale of vengeance - 7/10 (10/03/18)

The blandly mistitled Zatoichi's Vengeance is a typical movie of the franchise about the skilled gambler, blind masseur and pitiless swordsman. Zatoichi witnesses how a man got attacked on the road side and speaks to the dying man who tells him his name and asks him to bring a small bag of money to someone called Taichi. Upon arriving in a nearby town, Zatoichi stumbles upon a young boy with that name and realizes he is the dead man's son. He hands the money over to the child and his grandmother but doesn't want to tell them the boy's father is dead. Zatoichi wants to leave town quickly but he is invited by the family of the dead man to stay and attend the roaring drums festival. While in town, Zatoichi witnesses how merchants get brutally extorted by a boss who has started controlling the calm town six months ago. Zatoichi gets caught in the conflict and decides to root for the helpless merchants while the boss hires the same man who killed Taichi's father to challenge Zatoichi to a deadly duel.

The story described above might sound familiar if you have watched the Zatoichi films released before this one. This is also the film's most obvious flaw because the story is quite predictable and doesn't add anything new to the franchise. Another element I disliked is the fact that some background stories of interesting characters aren't fully explored. We never get to know why Taichi's father really had to die and the reason why the caring prostitute in the town's brand-new brothel ended up like this isn't fully explained either. One element a lot of people praise but that I didn't appreciate was the presence of a blind priest Zatoichi comes across. The old man is quite arrogant and selfish. He asks Zatoichi to buy him food, talks to him while lying down to sleep and doesn't stop lecturing him but can't give any useful advice either. One moment, he tells Zatoichi to not draw his sword in front of Taichi who idolizes the blind samurai and then he approves Zatoichi's decision to defend the exploited merchants. I happened to find the character of the blind priest very annoying, dishonest and pretentious.

Still, there are enough positive elements about the movie to make it at least an average entry in the epic franchise. First of all, the set of characters is overall quite interesting. Zatoichi is brought to think about his destructive lifestyle, Taichi is torn between admiring and despising the blind samurai, the prostitute is torn between helping her colleagues and helping herself and even the samurai that challenges Zatoichi has to fight his inner demons because he needs to take enormous risks to make money in order to free the person he still loves. The film's atmosphere is also quite intense. It's interesting to see a calm town with honest citizens getting terrorized and infiltrated by criminals, gamblers and prostitutes. Thirdly, the fight sequences are quite great, especially the fight scenes on the bridge where Zatoichi's opponents try to distract the blind samurai with their roaring drums.

In the end, you will like Zatoichi's Vengeance if you like the franchise. It's an entertaining film even though it doesn't bring anything new to the franchise. If you aren't familiar with the franchise yet, you should rather start watching it in chronological order.