Yoji Yamada's "The Hidden Blade" continues the themes, settings and depiction of samurai heroism he so brilliantly developed in his last film, "The Twilight Samurai" (2002). A graceful pace allows Yamada to explore fully the life of a lower-caste samurai in a rural fiefdom, where money is always in short supply and clan pressures lurk just outside his compound. Yamada again turns to the short stories of Shuhei Fujisawa to draw an indelible portrait of a solitary samurai with an unyielding code of honor and dignity that never will allow him to stray even for a moment into disgrace.

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