A young man heeds the call of adventure in Yoshinari Nishikori's Tatara Samurai, leaving his idyllic village to become a soldier. He soon has second thoughts — but violence is coming his way, like it or not, in a movie that sometimes echoes its hero's ambivalence by toying with viewers' expectations of swordslinger cinema. Genre fans should respect the picture if not embrace it wholeheartedly, but history buffs will find something to appreciate as well in this 16th-century tale.

Gosuke (Sho Aoyagi) comes from a family of men who make steel. Their village, Tatara, is renowned for the quality... read the rest.