Review of Tajomaru: Avenging Blade

A fun entertaining movie to watch. A cool samurai loses his estate, his older brother is murdered and his longtime girlfriend is coerced into marrying the bad guy. The cool samurai kills a renowned thief and takes on his name: Tajomaru. He then joins a group of bandits and after some time learns that the cause of all his troubles was his childhood friend. He goes and confronts his ex-friend and ends up in a dungeon. Luckily a military lord, acting as judge, investigates what really happened. We learn from some testimonies what intrigue had really happened. The shogun comes and takes sides with the bad guy but the cool samurai is rescued by his bandit friends. He seeks out the girlfriend, and returns to have a sword battle the bad guy. There is kind of rock music soundtrack to this movie which makes it interesting. It makes the film feel modern rather than stuffy and old. The plot twists really are like the novel Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.