Serdar | Genji Press

Samurai Assassin is in many ways a brother film to Sword of Doom — it was directed by the same man (Kihachi Okamoto), shares one of the same stars (Toshiro Mifune), and even the same screenwriter (Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto). It doesn’t exist on the same level as Doom — few movies do — but Assassin is good enough in its own right that comparing the two directly is probably unfair. Also, like Doom, it’s not as widely recognized as many of the “staple” samurai movies (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, etc.), but don’t let that stop you if you’re curious.

The young man’s job is ostensibly to leave takeout menus on people’s front doors. If the menus are still there when he returns later in the day, he breaks in — he’s quite handy with his tools — settles down for a little while, and makes himself at home while everyone else is out. Sometimes he does the owners’ laundry, or fixes things that are broken. For the most part, he slips in and out of other people’s lives like a ghost.

One day he ends up at the door of a large mansion. He soaks in the tub, practices his golf swing, waters the plants, repairs an inaccurate bathroom scale. He also discovers a woman, as silent as he is, sporting a split lip and a bruised eye courtesy of her husband. The husband himself is alternately cruel and comforting, trying to command love from her when it must be earned instead. The young man and the husband come to blows, in a manner of speaking, and she leaves with this curious stranger to experience something like freedom with him.