Zatoichi

"Zatoichi has the rhythm and energy of an action movie and Kitano does not abandon the violence of the Yakuza film, a genre he put on the map.
He orchestrates the fight scenes with superb gestures where the sword thrusts cause spouts and floods of digital blood with a ferocity that is both knowing and stylish. He also puts much humour and an astonishing poetic freshness in these adventures where we witness gracious beings, tender smiles and a pure charm, all of which are completed with an enthusiastic tap dance number with very contemporary choreography. Here Kitano reaches the quintessence of what he wants (and succeeds) to do throughout the film: an exact proportioning of the traditional samourai film with the imagination of today."

LE FIGARO

"After Dolls, the asthetic, conceptual melodrama Takeshi Kitano has decided to amuse us but always with style…. Zatoichi an exercise in recycled style that is not afraid to give the spectaor an undeniable pleasure and falls into current vogue for swordfighting films… Kitano is an elegant and unpredictable cineaste."

Les Inrockuptibles

"As of the first images, the film of Kitano seems to respectfully pay its debt to the series which he brings up to date by mixing the genres (but is this not also one of the characteristics of the directors style?) crossing violence gore, comedy, melodrama and burlesque….And this manner of making entertainment, this uncertainty, to decide between truth and the fake becomes the breathing of the universe. A beautiful means of showing its faith in the power and the magic of the spectacle, and thus of the cinema itself."

Le Monde

"In our eyes, this film had all that its recent predecessors missed:
irreverence, health, madness, formal freedom, the nonsense and
a certain footing which must be called grace. Kitano himself, reinventing the actor, unrecognizable as an old/young man, the eyelids painted (like Cocteau)….the combat of Kitano seems to us more exciting with a glance to the films which are its contemporaries (Kill Bill, The Matrix)… the film seems to rush, advance, slash, dance, fight and advance like Zatoichi: with the sense of smell and an ear of precision."

Liberation