The Samurai and the Prisoner follows the blueprint of a cozy mystery. It’s a chamber piece, and takes place in a small town of sorts — a walled castle under siege — where an amateur sleuth — the lord of the castle, Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) — solves a series of mysteries. These are all classic whodunnits, mysterious murders that happen offscreen and are resolved by the time the seasons change and the next chapter begins. For this reason, fans of the genre will find pleasure in director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s faithful adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s prize-winning 2021 novel. But that’s only one aspect of this multifaceted film, which has the intrigue of an Agatha Christie story and the gravitas of an Akira Kurosawa epic.
Best known for his horror films about techno-alienation (2001’s Pulse, for example, or last year’s Cloud), The Samurai and the Prisoner is Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s first foray into the jidaigeki genre (loosely, a Japanese term for stories set in the pre-modern era). The film is set in the year 1578, during a turbulent period of infighting known as the Sengoku Period. Lord Murashige has just made the risky decision to defy tyrannical warlord Nobunaga Oda (Bando Shingo), and tensions are high among the warriors, courtiers, servants, and prisoners who live in the castle as they prepare for a months-long siege.
