Blade of the Immortal

A gruelling, blood-soaked and often darkly comic samurai epic with a huge body count, Blade of the Immortal is an outrageous delight.

An imaginative, gory, frenetic samurai carve-em-up, there's an irresistible energy about the project from the get-go.

It's a stylish slash fest, which delivers visceral thrills along with quietly striking moments of beauty.

Striding vigorously through 141 minutes of Miike's largesse, Blade is arguably too much of a good thing. But hey, that's immortality for you.

It's lots of fun and ridiculously violent, but the running time means it eventually becomes wearisome.

[An] expansive and surreally violent supernatural action movie; you could almost call it an undead samurai picaresque.

A landmark film in a helter-skelter career, Blade of the Immortal proves beyond any doubt that Miike is a master of action, mayhem and storytelling.

... Miike delivers flying limbs, spraying blood, and fields of corpses with flamboyant style and a mordant sense of humor.

Take the fantasy elements out and Blade of the Immortal is a brilliantly effective throwback to the "chanbara" sword-fighting films of the 1960s.

The film's faults come down to the inconcise nature of its action choreography and overall editing.