Hunter In The Dark

Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai (Ran), Sonny Chiba. Would Chuck Norris please report to Wimp City immediately? Japanese action genre director Hideo Gosha (The Wolves) delivers the goods in this violent samurai epic set during the mid-18th century. The film opens with the appearance of a mysterious, scarred stranger, a wandering amnesiac samurai who is looking for a job. Joining underworld lord Gomyo's operation, the strange Tanigawa earns his stripes fairly quickly by dispatching a rival lord with a little on the spot Christian Barnard action to the heart (if you know what I mean). As a bulldog, Tanigawa is strictly pit--once he latches on he doesn't let go. In one of the film's most memorable tete a tete's, Tanigawa slices his way through about a dozen rice paper walls and then about a dozen warriors, leaving arms and legs lying all over the place like some kind of gruesome litterbug. In another scene, he takes on a bevy of knife-wielding geishas who interrupt his bath. But there's more to Hunter In The Dark than simply hack-and-hew; the fairly complex storyline has Tanigawa overturning plots hatched by underlings and rivals while trying to unravel the secret of his own past. A good mix of story and action, Hunter In The Dark is beautifully filmed (and presented in the letterboxed format), and features excellent subtitling. Audience: Upscale slummers who wouldn't touch a Norris or Seagal film but occasionally like a little raw meat in their video diet.