Berlin International Film Festival 2000

Dora-Heita by Kon Ichikawa

Kon Ichikawa's 74th film one of the most pleasurable experiences to be had anywhere in this year's Berlinale should have been made 30 years ago. In 1969, as Japan's old studio system began to crumble, Ichikawa teamed up with three fellow veterans to create the independent company Yonki-no-Kai, aka The Four Musketeers.

His partners were Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Keisuke Kinoshita, all now dead. Dora-Heita was written by all of them and intended as a collective project. But the box-office

failure of Kurosawa's Dodes'kaden dashed those hopes, and the script has lain unfilmed until now.

Koji Yakusho (The Eel) tells the story of Mochizuki Koheita, nicknamed 'Dora-Heita', a magistrate sent by his clan to clean up a small regional fief which contains the Horisoto enclave, a centre for prostitution, gambling and smuggling.

Realising that the corruption reaches to the top echelon of local government, he decides on unorthodox tactics. Posing as a dissolute, he infiltrates Horisoto and confronts the enclave's crime-lords on their own terms. Unapologetically old-fashioned in structure and style, the film blends samurai action with drama and plentiful humour to superbly entertaining effect.

Tony Rayns