“Bushido” is veteran director Kazuya Shiraishi’s first samurai period drama, but like his acclaimed 2018 cops-versus-yakuza action movie “The Blood of Wolves,” the film is a lovingly conceived and meticulously executed throwback that revitalizes the genre.
The earlier film was inspired by Kinji Fukasaku’s gritty 1970s “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” series that exposed the hollowness of the traditional gang code. “Bushido,” which is based on a famous rakugo (comic storytelling) tale, similarly recalls old-school samurai swashbucklers, complete with top-knotted heroes out for justice and revenge. It’s thus closer in theme to the films of a populist entertainer like Masahiro Makino (the “Jirocho” series) than a genre deconstructionist like Masaki Kobayashi, whose ronin protagonist in his 1962 masterpiece “Harakiri” is more viscerally desperate than conventionally noble. Even so, “Bushido” shares some of the scathing critique found in “Harakiri” of a feudal society rife with cruelty and corruption.