The third and final chapter in director Yoshi Yamada’s revisionist samurai trilogy, begun in 2003 with the Oscar-nominated The Twilight Samurai and continued the following year with The Hidden Blade, doesn’t quite deliver the punch of its predecessors, though it’s not without a solid punch of its own, bringing poignant thematic closure to Yamada’s bold reinvention of what had been one of the most entrenched and time-honored genres in film history. An extremely limited release by micro-distributor Eleven Arts won’t likely reach beyond a small core audience of Japanese cinema buffs, though good reviews and solid word of mouth should help stir broader support for the eventual DVD release.

As in The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, Yamada here seeks to redefine the feudal samurai in human terms, warriors more beset with human problems than possessed of superhuman killing skills. Takuya Kimura stars as Shinnojo, an honored poison taster for the shogun who falls ill after digesting a badly prepared, out-of-season shellfish. When he wakes, the toxins have taken their toll, leaving him almost entirely blind. Fearful that his loss of position will put them both out on the street, Shinnojo’s beloved wife Kayo (Rei Dan) follows her family’s advice and seeks the help of a top shogun advisor (Mitsugoro Bando), who promises to see to Shinnojo’s welfare—for a price.

Filmed in a handful of simple, mostly interior locales with a relatively small cast, this is far and away the most intimate of the three films. From a narrative standpoint, it’s also the most simple and direct—structured almost like a romantic comedy around a loss-and-return trajectory that affirms love as a value on equal footing with that of honor. Anyone familiar with samurai cinema in general cannot fail to recognize just how revolutionary a concept this is, even by the humanistic standards of such greats as Kurosawa, Inagaki and Mizoguchi. But Yamada stages it all matter-of-factly, trusting both his actors and his audience to connect with one another in spite of, rather than because of, the intervening conventions of cinema.

Deliberately paced, with several excruciatingly intimate scenes that drag viewers through a veritable minefield of emotions, Love and Honor ultimately rides on the strength of its performances, most notably the remarkable tandem of Kimura and Dan. Fans of Japanese cinema will also get a momentary kick out of seeing veteran actor Ken Ogata—star of Paul Schrader’s Mishima, among countless others—in a brief cameo as Shinnojo’s fencing instructor.

More broadly, Love and Honor is a welcome affirmation of Yamada’s determination to maintain his historic workload, even while in his 70s. Due to turn 77 later this year, the director—who has more than 70 movies to his credit, including nearly the entire Tora-san series—has already made another film since completing this one in 2006, and shows no signs of slowing down.

So much the better for us all.

Distributor: Eleven Arts
Cast: Takuya Kimura, Rei Dan, Takashi Sasano and Mitsugoro Bando
Director: Yôji Yamada
Screenwriters: Yôji Yamada and Emiko Hiramatsu & Ichirô Yamamoto
Producers: Hiroshi Fukazawa and Ichirô Yamamoto
Genre: Drama
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 122 min.
Release date: June 20 ltd.