Like me when I do everything you ask: what's not to like? Putting the 'arts' back in 'martial arts'... Admittedly, my knowledge of Chinese action films is tragically inadequate, but I had a blast following the blind swordsman through his action-packed and new-to-me adventures. I also love it when a film understands not everything needs to be an epic saga and limits itself to the length it needs to be (which in this case is 74 minutes!).

Quite a strong Eastern, a blind swordsman as an instrument of revenge for the death of family and desecrated honor. Once he fought and lost, the enemies took the country into their hands and the poor have no one to rely on, except for the obscure zatoichi. Cool camera work in a samurai movie. Not Kitano, but also nothing

A blind man with his trusty steed and the path which lead him to unsheathe is sword. Where the law has no author nor a face to represent what is right. The common folk has to suffer the consequences of people under a thumb and the hand power who is uses that thumb. Here come the blind swords man to the rescue of a maiden torn by a unfortunate event that set him for her in to this path which he long left behind of revenge in and for her name. Great movie even though the plot is basic.

Nice sword battles but otherwise quite soulless. I question how a soldier, like the main protagonist, could learn to fight blind in such a short amount of time as that shown in the film. It would make more sense for him to be blind from a young age to make it believable that he actually had heightened senses. Visually, despite all the gruesome stuff, which was pretty good, I just think it looked too clean cut and digital.

Really nice decors and costumes. The image in general looks great, helped by good plans and camera work. The concept is not really novel, neither is the story, but it's a good take on it. Other than the general look of the movie, the best selling point is that the main character is directly likeable and fun to follow around. Yes, blind swordman is nothing new, but it's something that easily works as it's easy to integrate comedy and action scenes. The fights are ok, but they could have been much better. The choreography is fine, but the filming with constant camera angle changes makes it impossible to appreciate the moves. It's too bad because the fights are a major part of the movie. Same thing with fights under falling snow. OK, it looks great as a picture, but in the end it just blurs the action even more. Gotta say the flaming sword move was cool though. It also goes with the "justice is blind" trope. Why does he decide to go all in to help this woman ? It is very probably not the worse injustice he has seen, and definitely not the easiest to fix. It cost [spoiler]his (only ?) friend's life. She was also helping him in his job and a lot of people seemed to rely on her[/spoiler]. Was it worth it ? How much more good could he have done were it not for it ? He also gives her all his money. That's a lot. How many other people could he have helped with that ?