Japan’s biggest live-action hit of 2014, this samurai sequel is, like so many western blockbusters, an 80-minute B-picture stifled under an extra hour’s worth of expensive production design. Backroom staffers clearly worked overtime housing the countless superfluous characters separating our androgynous hero from his flame-grilled enemy, yet while the period recreation is lavish, all this flagrant expansionism achieves is to reroute us from the swordplay we’ve paid to see. It isn’t added VFM, rather wasted time: a shameless cliffhanger sets up a third instalment, when the story, with a few brisk strokes of the accountant’s pen and the editor’s blade, really should have been resolved here.
