Hana

When young, revenge-driven Soza (Junichi Okada) has trouble finding his father's murderer in the big city, he discovers a hidden aptitude for the peaceful art of schoolteaching. So when he finally stumbles on the killer, will he choose the sword over the pen? Or can he find a path to forgiveness instead? Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, this entertaining twist on the sumarai genre also features Rie Miyazawa.

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Hana is surprisingly funny, quirky, touching and entertaining. It is not a samurai film in the traditional hack and slash sense. In fact, there's really no sword play in it at all. Hana centers more on the traditional samurai Bushido code of honor and the pointlessness of it in a world of peace. Soza, a low ranking samurai of questionable swordfighting abilities, is reluctantly charged with the task of finding his father's killer and thus gaining honor and money through vengeance. He moves to Edo (now Tokyo) and establishes himself in a slum of row houses reminiscent of Kurosawa's The Lower Depths. The setting has that same sense of degradation and community. Over the course of three years, he comes to understand and care for his neighbors and begins to question the code of honor by which he is supposed to live. Even though Hana is a period piece, aspects of it mirror modern day Japan. Through the dying world of the traditional samurai, Hana reflects the loss of traditional values in modern Japan.
- pterosaur