Hunter in the Dark (1979) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by More_Badass ★★★★ 3

  Like with Bandits vs Samurai Squadron from the year before, Hideo Gosha delivers a crime thriller wrapped in samurai scheming. Hunter InThe Dark’s grim tangled proto-yakuza-vs-insidious-clan backstab-fest is split between an amnesic one-eyed assassin, a villainous Chiba, and underworld boss Nakadai. I lost the plot around the third act but the bloodshed, secrets, double-crosses, double identities, and femme fatale’s ruthless conniving of this jidaigeki criminal underbelly held my interest throughout. And as expected, Gosha’s ample confrontations are superbly staged and ferociously choreographed. In particular, a grueling sword brawl of an assassination kicks off with tactical preparation of switching to a short blade for advantage within a confined space, then unfolds around a severed hand clinging to a sword stuck in the ceiling. More phenomenal action from an unsung master.

• Review by Zoë 🐛 ★★★★

  Sometimes you search up 'Tatsuya Nakadai' on Criterion Channel and scroll until you find something you haven't seen before that looks interesting! I didn't have any high expectations (or any expectations at all for that matter) going into Hunter in the Dark because I'd never heard of it (judging by the meager 260 viewers it has on Letterboxd I'm going to assume this film isn't too well remembered) but I ended up being really pleasantly surprised. While action movies sometimes don't connect with me I liked the intricate and convoluted gangster epic that the story focuses on. It was admittedly hard to keep track of everything that was happening, there are half a dozen different plot lines that all connect…

• Review by SubToretto ★★★★

  I knew from the opening assassination that I was going to enjoy this, and I came very close to loving it.

  Film #114 in Summer of the Red Sun- Celebrating 125 Years of Japanese Cinema

  The love still came in spades when it came to the visual artistry, it felt like every other scene I was marvelling at the blocking; whether it be faces encased in the tiny frames of windows, or a samurai cloaked in shadow imposing on half the frame. Whenever someone steps into frame, it shifts the eye and paints a whole new picture. Its like Gosha is using the camera as a paintbrush but to play the piano, as the measured rhythm of these images play…

• Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★½

  Criterion Channel, film #44

  Men with swords bore me to tears.

  However, there was this shot of a decapitated arm suspended in midair. I didn't know if it was cool or weird or both.

  I made a note on a guy stabbing a woman to death. You know, I am not so fond of watching things like that.

  Vegan alert:
  A parrot is tapped by a blunt object and it screeches.

• Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Body parts one leaves behind in the walk towards doom.

• Review by Waldo ★★★★★ 1

  Holy Thanksgiving Turkey! Japan during the 18th century was f*cked up. Government officials were bribed and awash in corruption. So the crime syndicates multiplied all fighting over control of the underworld. This is one of the best gangster films I've seen. Gosha's directing is brutal and elegant in equal doses. I loved every blood soaked, elegant minute of it. Interesting use of women in such power plays. The bathhouse hit featuring a group of ferocious beautifully dressed kimono wearing gals was outstanding. Loved it!

• Review by Emma Fogarty✝️ ★★★½

  Hideo Gosha directs a 137 minute samurai film starring Yoshio Harada and Tatsuya Nakadai, about a bandit gang leader who hires an amnesiac wandering samurai as his bodyguard.

  When we look at Hunter in the dark we can probably go with Goyokin Gosha had already mastered the craft of the Samurai genre film already and was everything he built up to.
  There's a story that leaves me mixed, sometimes it has a habit of just dropping subplots for a while or not fleshing them out as much, at others this really does a good job of adding to the melodramatic fun of the film and the soapiness of its plot and firmly seats this one into the samurai revisionist way…

• Review by HanTheCan ★★★★½ 1

  This is simply epic in scale and in every aspect, from a star studded cast to a convoluted plot to cinematography and soundtrack. To begin to outline the plot is virtually impossible, but it concerns the underground world of 18th century Edo under a corrupt Tokugawa government. The only sure thing is that the shadows of deceit are endless, there's no end to the backstabbing, there's no end to greed. Tatsuya Nakadai and Yoshio Harada steal the show with powerful performances and well written characters, Harada plays a ronin without a memory and without a past who is then is hired by Gomyo (Nakadai), an underground crime boss, as a bodyguard and assassin. Soon enough these two get involved in…

• Review by Ashley Wilmer ★★★★½

  Bastante espectacular diría yo, la historia está buena, los personajes son buenos, y las peleas que no están ni por asomo de ser malas, y son muy entretenidas de ver, pero en comparación a Goyokin y Tenchu!, está es la más débil de entre las 3 debido a su aburrido primer acto el cual no me gusta mucho, cosa que es diferente en esas dos obras donde captan tu interés desde el minuto uno, pero aun asi sube muchísimo el nivel medida la película avanza.

  El protagonista es el más afectado por esto, que el primer acto sea aburrido, ya que en si, no se siente mucho como un protagonista y te da un poco igual, y eso de que…

• Review by John D.

  A “Hunter in the Dark,” is someone who lives by the code of the criminal Underworld: nothing is as it seems.

  Gomyo, played effortlessly stoic by Nakadai, is the leader of a Yakuza gang in the 1700s. Though his gang controls many of the criminal enterprises through quid-pro-quo arrangements and favors, these alliances easily crumble under the weight of extra gold. When the story begins, Gomyo’s life is threatened and saved within an instant by his own body guard, in the film’s first of many double-crosses. He later learns that his one-eyed Ronin bodyguard is the former son of a wealthy family. A tragedy befell his bodyguard which led to the accidental killing of his own father instead of Sonny…

• Review by Varghese ★★★½

  Even though the movie slows down after the first two acts,the twists and turns were interesting enough to keep me glued. The action set pieces were brutal!

• Review by MediumReginald ★★★★★

  Do you like samurai movies? Do you like yakuza movies? Do you like softcore p*rn? This is as close as you'll get to all three at once.

  But seriously there's some absolutely incredible stuff here. Beautiful shots of people in the rain. A man crashing through a series of paper walls to fight a bunch of guys in a meeting. A sword fight in a granary while grain pours down from a hole in the ceiling cut with a katana. Amazing images.