No way around it, Yamada made the same damn movie twice. The Hidden Blade is basically the exact same film as The Twilight Samurai except for four elements:
1. The Hidden Blade has a much more developed love story, albeit crammed into the first act, giving the The Hidden Blade the faint odor of a TV movie.
2. The protagonist knows his final foe in The Hidden Blade; this is effective in a traditional dramatic sense, but there was something kind of epic about the foe’s anonymity in The Twilight Samurai. Neither are portrayed as straight villains, just unhinged versions of the protagonists (less restrained in their anti-government ideals).
3. The Hidden Blade manages to be a bit more twilight than the Twilight Samurai; the depiction of a fading time is much more poignant in the former and a good deal more ambiguous. While ways of the samurai are shown to be ineffective in modern times, they are also depicted as increasingly dishonorable – instead of the feelings I got from The Twilight Samurai which were dominantly anti-west.
4. Though The Hidden Blade has the better social critique, The Twilight Samurai tips the scales by being a much better underdog story. The Twilight Samurai wisely starts its protagonist (played with disarming sympathy by Hiryuki Sinada) in abject shame, making his sword mastery all the more exhilarating. The Hidden Blade’s protagonist is kind of just an unmarried, noble, normal joe.
I’m not complaining though, when was the last time someone else made a decent Samurai Movie?
Rating 7.5/10 (easily an 8 or 8.5 had I not seen Twilight first)
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