Street Of The Masterless Samurai is a standard samurai saga, rather different from the previous film I'd seen by its director, the interesting 1966 documentary, Silence Has No Wings. It opens with swordplay in the rain and climaxes with the violent spectacle of a small group of ronin coming to the aid of a whore in the forest, grotesquely held down between two bulls who are about to tear her apart. (Is this the Japanese equivalent of the melodramatic heroine tied to the railroad tracks?)One of them is even got up in full body armor and riding a horse. In between though there is little action, as the ronin who linger in a countryside roadhouse can't rise to the challenge of a sinister entourage of samurai who dress up at night masked in blue (almost like the KKK!) to terrorize several local women who are struggling to make ends meet as prostitutes.The setting is 1836, during the last decades of an apparently corrupt Shogunate.The most vividly etched of these tavern characters is "Bull," a yojimbo or bouncer, who appears burly and tough but later instead of fighting the arrogant samurai that he looks like he's going to duel, sells himself to them out of desperation and even degrades himself by crouching like a dog and retrieving a sandal for one. In the end he will redeem himself by committing suicide and bringing down his boss with him. This character,by turns comic, pathetic, and tragic, is played in his last screen role by Shin Katsu, famous for his earlier Zatoichi vehicles,and even if the film isn't all it could be, it's worth seeing for his acting.

Beautiful to look at Samurai film concerning a bunch of masterless swordsmen who end up protecting a brothel and tavern from some bad ass samurai. more meditative then flat out action film this is a film of characters and ideas. yes there is action but the effects of events have weight because we care about the people. I picked the DVD up a while ago but never sat down to see it until tonight. I've been running across the film on Kung Fu on Mojo HD and could never piece it all together. Running across the film in my movie case I pulled it out and watched a good portion of it tying together the knots of plot. I like the film a great deal. Its not perfect and it wouldn't be on my all time favorite list but it is a good two hours that I wouldn't mind revisiting at a later time. Its worth a look especially if you're willing to be patient with how the story unfolds.

My review may be biased because I love samurai flicks, & I BLOODSHED love Director Kazuo Kuroki and I will BLOODSHED forever love (& mourn) Katsu "Zatoichi" Shintaro....One of the greatest Japanese actors BLOODSHED of all time, (next to The Magnificent Toshiro Mifune, & the Brilliant Tatsuya Nakadai of course!) All that aside, this BLOODSHED movie can be enjoyed on many levels: Comedy, Drama, Romance, and last but not least...Action!Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention...LOTS OF BLOODSHED, but you'll have to have patience, 'cuz it's like the icing on the cake here. I will definitely be BLOODSHED adding this gem to my ever growing library! And another thing... The only bad "Zatoichi" movie that I've seen is the one made recently by Beat Takashi...it sucked! Long Live Katsu Shintaro R.I.P.

With a storyline that has so much promise, and as a tribute to the father of its genre (chambera/jidai-geki), I found this version of Ronin Gai to be both weak and disappointing. The editing and camera-work were dull, close-ups that were cried out for failed to materialize, the incidental music was irrelevant, and characterizations while promising, never attained their potential. The director was supposedly inspired to become such by Kurosawa's work, but aside from a few half-hearted rip-offs there is absolutely nothing of that great director's magic here. This is a bland samurai film in the extreme, and very disappointing.