From the Rental Vault (2009): Goemon

The idea of the thief who robs from the rich and gives to the poor is not limited to Sherwood Forest. In Japan, the real-life character who takes on that folk-hero role is Ishikawa Goemon, the title character in Kiriya Kazuaki's 2009 release Goemon. The real-life Ishikawa was caught up in the events that led to the Battle of Sekigahara and the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and while Kiriya's movie uses many historical characters, it has as much to do with that real history as Braveheart does with the real William Wallace.

Which is of course no problem, because Goemon is an excellent story carried off by top performances wrapped up in a rip-roaring action movie. Ishikawa Goemon is a master thief who regularly robs from rich nobles to distribute the money to Japan's peasants. Those peasants groan under the constant warring of the nobles and can use all the help they can get, but when we first meet their benefactor he seems to work as much for his own amusement as he does for their good. Something he steals gets him more caught up in politics than he wants, ensnared in the plots of Mitsunari Ishida, his feudal lord Hideyoshi Totomi and Tokugawa Ieyesu. It brings him to the attention of Hideyoshi's loyal ninja assassin Saizō and Tokugawa's retainer Hattori Hanzo. As the story moves forward, we find that Goemon, Saizo and Hanzo have shared history and that Goemon himself has a more layered past than his wastrel thief persona suggests. He and others, including his assistant Sasuke Sarutobi, Saizō and Lady Chacha, niece of a slain warlord, will have to make painful choices as events unfold.

Kiriya has a lot of things to keep in the air and at times doesn't manage it as well as he might. He's also the cinematographer, and designs Goemon with the kind of stylized CGI look Zack Snyder used in 300. Most of the time that works as well, although certain scenes would have benefited from a subtler use of the technique. Given the folk-hero nature of the story, most of the fighting characters in the movie engage in superhuman feats of strength and endurance and that reinforces the mythical quality of the movie.

Most of the cast excels. Some have parts that are too small to matter and at least one actor -- Gori as Sasuke -- puts too much slapstick into a character that's going to have to carry a pretty heavy dramatic load. But Eguchi Yōsuke as Goemon brings to life a man who realizes that the transformation from merely appearing to care about people to actually caring about them will have a cost, and that he may not be the only one to bear it. As Saizō, Osawa Takao quietly provides the voice of conscience that prods Goemon into real action instead of gestures, and Ryōko Hirosue makes Chacha another pivot point as the characters must consider their actions as well as the consequences.

Both in terms of story and appearance Goemon doesn't bear much similarity with real life or actual Japanese history -- but in terms of portraying the kinds of choices people must often make on a smaller scale, choices about vengeance, violence, destiny and other weighty ideas -- it delivers quite a bit of real food for thought.