The Samurai That Night (Sono Yoru no Samurai)
Sunday, July 21 at 1:00 pm
333 E 47th St, New York, NY 10017
**U.S. Premiere
Japan. 2012. 119 min. HD CAM, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Masaaki Akahori. With Masato Sakai, Takayuki Yamada, Hirofumi Arai, Gou Ayano, Maki Sakai, Tomorowo Taguchi, Mitsuki Tanimura, Tsutomu Takahashi, Kinuwo Yamada, Sakura Ando.
The titular samurai may not have a sword or armor, but his connection with death is no less deep. Introverted, bespectacled iron foundry manager Nakamura (Masato Sakai) has been living his life as though he were already dead, since his wife was killed five years ago. He deals with her death by obsessively replaying the last message she left on his answering machine, in which she scolded him for eating too much custard. Fresh out of jail, the perpetrator, a brutal young man named Kijima (Takayuki Yamada, the lead of Milocrorze and one of Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins), returns to his habits of behaving badly until anonymous letters arrive, promising “to kill him and then myself” on the anniversary of the crime. Could the bereft, half-shattered ironworks man truly be capable of fulfilling such vengeance?