'The Twilight Samurai'
By the sword

FORGET BILL. Tarantino won't be filching much from this movie. Set just before the Meiji Restoration in rural Japan, Yoji Yamada's historical drama omits rampant violence and instead focuses on familial struggles and human perseverance. Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada), a humble samurai earning a pauper's salary, loses his wife to illness, leaving him to support two young daughters and his senile mother. Though forced into an exhaustingly occupied life, Seibei eventually finds happiness in raising his daughters. But political unrest in feudal Japan spreads, and the dedicated father is unwillingly drawn into the conflict. Yamada's pacing matches the speed of an old Mizoguchi drama, moving from one narrative to the next with patient, undisturbed fluidity. The film's two sword-fight sequences may not be enough to appease die-hard samurai fans, but any more violence in this story would just seem gratuitous. Twilight doesn't try to reinvent The Seven Samurai or a Shakespearean saga, but it finds poignancy in even the most unassuming human conflicts. (Dave Kim)