Izo - Sword Fights

We begin in 1865, when the Shogunate is on its last legs, but still capable of punishing its enemies. One is Izo (Kazuya Nakayama), an assassin in the service of Hanpeida (Ryosuke Miki), a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo, where he finds himself one with the city's homeless. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine, his entire soul still enraged by his treatment in his past life. His response to the powers-that-be, whose predecessors put him to death, is the sword. My favorite Takashi Miike movie. This film is based on a real person, who really was crucified. In feudal Japan, crucifixion was used instead of seppuku or beheading on the most reviled criminals. In the case of a person of the samurai class, it would be the most shameful possible way to die. As a matter of fact, the symbol of the crucifix was something that was a great obstacle to the spread of christianity upon it's introduction to Japan.