Tom Laughlin later bastardized this masterpiece as "The Master Gunfighter", but it cannot be understood or transplanted outside of its own environment. A member of a samurai clan has abandoned his family and friends after the clan stole government gold and massacred a village to cover its tracks. Bereft of his property and status, he makes his living as a carnival trick swordsman, but he is made aware that there is more government gold on the horizon, and that his former clan intends to repeat its previous outrages. Previously he identified himself as part of the clan; He has recreated his life as a low class bum but never specifically opposed his former clan. Now he finds he must again recreate himself--as a man of conscience who fights for justice, rather than clan loyalty or greed.

This is one of the handful of Hideo Gosha's masterpieces and a clear statement of his philosophy.

Director Masaki Kobayashi had only a few obsessions to which he kept returning. Honor and the hollowness of official dignity were his idees fixe. He was a masterful filmmaker, and his ideas fascinate me.

Guy Pearce plays the middle brother of a clan of ruthless bushrangers, captured with his infantile younger brother by the local police authority, played by Ray Winstone, and given a terrible choice: let his younger brother be hanged or hunt down and kill his monstrously brutal older brother, played by Danny Huston.

The Aborigines are divided among rebels at war with the whites, bushrangers collaborating with the white outlaws, subservient houseboys living for the moment in the European manner, and others trying to live their millennia-old traditions without being pushed aside or slaughtered. All of these live on top of a vast and uncaring nature in which only the Aborigines can find peace.

Advance word made me think the story would be about the discovery and destruction of a Korean Brigadoon. In fact, there is nothing mystical about the town of Dongmakgol: it is just a remote village not yet involved in the Korean War, populated by decent people. The North and South Korean soldiers who find their way to Dongmakgol are reluctant warriors crippled by their experiences, and (mostly) determined to spare the people of the village from the casual obliteration declared its fate.

I was very pleased to find that the main American character, a crashed naval aviator, is as decent a person as his saviors in Dongmakgol, and doubly happy that he was played by a very competent actor, rather than the appallingly bad white stock villains one finds in so many east Asian films. Unfortunately, the other Americans, in smaller roles, are every bit as villainous as, if still rather better acted than, the evil whitefaces one sees so often.