Rurouni
Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno **
Dir: Keishi Ohtomo. With: Takeru Sato, Emi
Takei, Tatsuya Fujiwara. 138 mins. Cert: 15
Japan’s biggest
live-action hit of 2014, this samurai sequel is – like so many Western
blockbusters – an 80-minute B-picture stifled under another hour’s worth of
expensive production design. Backroom staffers clearly worked overtime housing
the countless superfluous characters separating our androgynous hero from his
flame-grilled nemesis, yet while the period recreation is unarguably lavish,
all this flagrant expansionism achieves is to reroute us from the swordplay
we’ve paid to see. It isn’t added VFM, rather wasted time: a shameless cliffhanger
sets up a third instalment, when – with a few brisk strokes of the accountant’s
pen and the editor’s blade – the story really should have been resolved here.
Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno opens in selected cinemas from today.
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