Letterboxd: Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival, 1970 - ★

When I love things, I really love them. Whole bodies of work. Artists, songwriters. I'm in for the long haul, and I'll excuse a lot. I love the character and Shintaro Katsu's endearing performances so much, that despite a handful of missteps, I couldn't bring myself to rate a single Zatoichi film in the first 20 at anything less than five stars. But this? It's a disjointed and tedious mess of a movie that feels like a careless mashup of scenes from prior films. There are too many antagonists but no real drama. Scenes run too long and transition poorly, often jumping time. I'm sorry, Ichi.