Review of Kibakichi (2004) by Ray D — 20 Jun 2009
At first, I thought this Japanese action film was going to be sort of like YOJIMBO with monsters, but after the titular hero (a werewolf samurai) gets to the little village where the action takes place, a town based around a casino where gamblers go missing and there are kappa monsters in the swamp outside, it turns into sort of a riff on NIGHTBREED of all things.
The first half of the movie is somewhat disjointed (there are short scenes with tonal shifts as the Yokai who run the casino go from scary to sympathetic, and flashbacks for our hero), and there is one character who's introduced abruptly and disappears just as abruptly, apparently only to set up a sequel.
About halfway through though, the plot kicks in as Kibakichi befriends the monsters, and the human girl they have adopted, and gets drawn into a double-cross by a nearby clan of humans. The climax of the movie is a ludicrous, action-packed twenty-minutes or so of mayhem, and it's easy to forgive a movie its flaws, when it leaves you in a good mood at the end.
This review of Kibakichi (2004) was written by Ray D on 20 Jun 2009.
Kibakichi has generally received mixed reviews.
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