Call it blind fury: sightless masseur Zatôichi (Takeshi Kitano) wanders through 19th-century Japan avenging the weak and oppressed with his razor-sharp samurai sword. A walking contradiction, he's a blind man armed with the skill and guile of a master swordsman. Based on the cult Zatôichi series that hooked Japan in the early 60s, this reimagining sees Kitano ditch his customary yakuza obsessions for a period actioner that glints with all the ruthless beauty of cold steel in the morning sunlight.

After the portentous meandering of Dolls, Zatoichi marks a return to form for Japan's leading filmmaker. Refusing to explain the blind swordsman's remarkable skill with a blade, Kitano simply gets on with the task of freeing the villagers of a remote mountain town from the oppression of a gang of evil samurai led by nasty ronin Hattori (Tadanobu Asano, who previously starred with Kitano in Gohatto).

"ARTERY-SPURTING VIOLENCE"

As push comes to shove and blades lock, the samurai action sequences prove bloody, brutal, and brilliant. Following the example of bad boy Takashi Miike in Ichi The Killer, Kitano uses CGI graphics to render the artery-spurting violence in grisly detail while delivering a level of swordsmanship that wouldn't just Kill Bill, but leave him collecting his severed head from the floor.

Clearly enjoying himself, Kitano clowns his way through the eventful plot, riffing on the theme of blindness and mistaken identity, while playfully rewriting the Zatôichi legend and closing with a bizarre Stomp-style dance sequence that seems to have strayed in, not just from another movie, but a parallel universe. Such unlikely moments of comedy do little to disperse the shadow hanging over the proceedings - a grim darkness that's enlivened only by great splashes of blood red.

Art as action, action as art: it's blood-spattered poetry. With a body count.

In Japanese with English subtitles.