The Samurai That Night

Sono Yoru no Samurai

A man obsessed with avenging his late wife, mown down by a hit-and-run driver, threatens to kill the guilty driver... but will he find his inner samurai to act on the threat?

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.

Image gallery

Image
Image

Director-Screenwriter Masaaki Akahori
Producer Keiko Fujimura
With Masato Sakai, Takayuki Yamada, Hirofumi Arai
Japan 2012
119 mins
UK distribution Phantom Film

Stage actor-director Masaaki Akahori turns film director with this adaptation of one of his own best plays. The ‘samurai’ of the title is Kenichi Nakamura, manager of a small ironworks foundry, and he’s obsessed with the idea of avenging his wife, killed in a hit-and-run incident five years earlier. The guilty driver, the loutish Kijima, has served a jail term and is now back on the streets… and receiving daily warnings in his mailbox that he and the anonymous writer will both die on the anniversary of the incident. Friends and relatives of Nakamura desperately urge him to abandon his suicidal revenge plan, but he’s immovable. Suspense mounts as the fateful day approaches, but Akahori has psychological insights to match his aesthetic control. His debut film cuts to the quick of some very human, very dark impulses and emotions.
Tony Rayns

Director statement

This is simply a film about human beings who are caught in a deep dilemma. They are not smart, nor intellectuals. It is a story about the conflict of awkward people in chaotic life. The film could be categorised as a revenge story, but I tried not to distinguish between the avenger and the avenged. In order to avoid a simple oppositional structure, I have created two unique male characters. Nakamura is no stereotypical tragic revenger and Kijima is a kind of charismatic loner but not a typical anti-hero, he is just a suburban punk. The story mainly focuses on Nakamura and Kijima, though it is also an ensemble film. It is not about the right or wrong of each character, but the continuing story of their regeneration after the film ends. Perhaps there will not be obvious hope, but the all characters intertwined by the accident in the film find something like a ‘soul’ they didn't know they had. Then it leads to their regeneration of their humanity... I tried to make a film like that. I did not want the film to have the sort of happy ending in which all problems are solved. Seemingly, nothing is resolved at the end, but you can see a ray of kindness, a ray of strength and a ray of hope… That is the ending I tried to make. My whole career has been in stage directing, and I do not have much experience as a film director. I tried not to think too much about the techniques of filmmaking, but focused on getting the rawest acting to the camera from my cast. I think the film has turned out raw and rough, just as I wished.
Masaaki Akahori

Director biography

Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1971, the playwright, theatre director and actor founded the experimental stage company The Shampoo Hat in 1996, and has also acted widely in Japanese film and TV. He co-wrote and acted in Kei Horie’s 2006 feature The Little Finger and the Forbidden Body. The Samurai That Night, his own first film, was originally produced for the stage with Masaaki writing, directing and performing.