BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL is one-man filmmaking army Takashi Miike’s 100th feature and arguably his largest scale project to date. I doubt the man who makes Ridley Scott look sluggish even broke a sweat (only a film a year, Ridders? You lightweight!). This is about the closest you can come to seeing a living anime, heightened action, graphically striking compositions, ultraviolence and ridiculous hair all-inclusive. It should really be Blade of the Immortals, because it’s basically the Japanese HIGHLANDER, only not crap. It’s as OTT as we’ve come to expect from Miike, but the melodrama, flying limbs and spurting claret is balanced with a unique sense of humour (Manji may be immortal, but he definitely feels, and gets really annoyed by, sustaining another mortal wound) and some down-to-earth chemistry between Takuya Kimura and young Hana Sugisaki. It’s an unexpectedly sweet little relationship between these two, perfectly in contrast with how amoral and angry everyone else in this story is. SSP