Unforgiven / Yurusarezaru Mono
Directed by Sang-il Lee
With Ken Watanabe, Koichi Sato, Akira Emoto,
Yuya Yagira, Shiori Kutsuna
Japan, 2013, 135 minutes
When: Friday, July 18, 2014 @ 8:30 PM
Where: Japan Society
333 East 47th Street NYC
(Between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
East Coast Premiere
"Unexpectedly brilliant." --Time Out London
In adapting Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Sang-il Lee paid tribute to the film's grandiosity and scale while exchanging America's Western frontier for Meiji-era Japan, a time of immense social and political change after the fall of the Shogunate. Jubei (Ken Watanabe), once a samurai assassin, has survived to raise his children as an impoverished farmer. Before his wife's death, he promised her that he would lay down his sword, but when Kingo Baba (Akira Emoto) comes with news of a bounty on two men who mutilated the face of a prostitute, he can't turn him down.
Young Goro (Yuya Yagira) joins the hunt, but they'll have to get through sadistic police chief Ichizo Oishi (Koichi Sato) first, and Jubei must confront even greater injustices, as well as his past deeds and killer heart. With gorgeously choreographed action set pieces in Hokkaido's beautiful and cruel landscape, this Unforgiven stands tall and alone. (Synopsis courtesy Japan Society)
Part of JAPAN CUTS 2014.
