The Betrayal (1966) User Reviews

Very underrated

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 7/10 · 8 December 2022]

It's been a while since I watched a good samurai movie, so was pleased to find that The Betrayal really scratched that itch. It almost feels like a Hitchcock-esque "man accused of doing something he didn't actually do, and going on the run" type of plot, except done with samurais instead of spies.

At just 87 minutes, I will say that although it goes by pretty quickly, the pacing's not always fantastic. There's a good deal of stopping and starting that can make some scenes feel repetitive, and I feel like that's especially true of some of the small skirmishes that play out through the film's first two acts. The action's not bad; just a little samey.

But much is forgiven when it comes to the final 15-20 minutes, which has a huge amount of action, and it's generally really well-choreographed. There's some ambitious camera movement in this big final action scene, too, and it overall looks like it would have taken ages to film (and there are so many extras in a few of the shots - almost like a small army).

At the risk of sounding bloodthirsty: it's a shame the action was bloodless. I don't need it splashing all over the place, but a well-timed blood spray here and there is often the icing on the cake when it comes to samurai action, and I don't remember a drop of blood being spilled in this movie, despite a bodycount that might approach 100.

(Also, in the subtitles for the version I watched, "saké" was spelled "sak," which was kind of funny every time).

Decent Downbeat Samurai Film With A Stunning Final Twenty Minutes

[jrd_73 · 7/10 · 19 August 2021]

I first read about The Betrayal in Patrick Galloway's excellent book Warring Clans, Flashing Blades. Galloway highly praised this film starring Raizo Ichikawa from the Kyoshiro Nemuri/Sleepy Eyes of Death series.

For most of the film's running time I was somewhat surprised by Galloway's enthusiasm. The plot involves an honorable samurai (Ichikawa) who allows himself to go into exile after a samurai of a rival clan is stabbed in the back (well, slashed actually). The honorable samurai did not commit the deed, but because the ones who did will not come forward, our hero agrees to leave the area and thus become the prime suspect of the killing. The hero sacrifices his happiness for the good of his clan. Supposedly, this exile is only to be for a year while the clan's boss works out a deal with the rival clan, but things do not go as planned.

Most of the film charts our hero's growing disillusionment with the samurai code. The Betrayal is not the only film to cover this ground. Harakiri, Onibaba, Samurai Rebellion, and Ugetsu have all, in more meaningful ways, called into question the role of the samurai. Therefore, while I liked the story well enough, I did not understand Galloway's praise. That is until I got to the film's last twenty minutes. When the hero finally has to face his former clan, the viewer is treated to a dizzying killfest that approaches the Lone Wolf and Cub movies (no blood sprays or severed body parts though). Ichikawa sells this sequence. He throws all of his energy into this action scene.

I am still not as gung-ho about the film as Galloway was. I find it just a slightly above average programmer (admittedly, a downbeat one) until that finale. However, that is some ending sequence.

Excellent Chambara Faire

[rickrudge · 7/10 · 14 November 2017]

The Betrayal (1966)

aka Daisatsujin orochi

A big braggart Samurai (Rytaro Gomi) barges into Master Isaka Yaichiro's dojo to challenge the Sensei, who wasn't there. Two students from the dojo go after this guy, bushwack and mortally wound him but he escapes to tell of the attack before he dies.

This neighboring gang comes back to the dojo and wants satisfaction. No one claimed to be the attacker.

Raizo Ichikawa, who is famous for his Sleepy Eyes of Death franchise, plays Takuma Kamuse , a young, talented, yet naive Samurai. He is engaged to Namie Katagiri (Kauru Yachigusa). Her father finds out that his nephew, Jurota Makabe (Ichiro Makatani) were the ones who killed the Samurai.

Part of this was a sense of Samurai loyalty, another part was not wanting to refuse his fiance's Father pleading for Takuma to run away for a year, making him seem like the prime suspect to the murder. If, after a year, this mess isn't cleared up, the father would commit hari kari.

On the run, Tacuma befriends a sarcastic crook, Funajiro (Fujioka Takuya) who follows him around and robs him every chance he gets. Poor Takuma is also betrayed by Jurota, and the father, Katagiri who dies before the year is up, forcing Takuma to be chased by the law, the angry gang, (who wants vengeance) and his own dojo.

In a fight with his dojo's sensei Takuma falls off a cliff. He is nursed back to health by a beautiful waitress, Shino (Shisho Fujimura) who falls in love with him, but Takuma is still in love with his Namie, but has given up all hope. Later, working for a Yakuza, Takuma sees Namie working in a brothel.

This is a very good movie except for the inevitable sword fight finale between Takuma and several armies of Samurai. By the late nineteen-sixties, the giant fight scene against countless Samurai has become clichéd, but at the time, it was very impressive.

Amazing!! Only Raizo could create such fury with a sword.

[alice_frye · 10/10 · 1 May 2006]

A serious young student at a popular dojo is pressured into taking the blame for a treacherous murder in order to save the family of his lovely and devoted fiancé. The real world, which exists outside of the stuffy and hypocritical confines of samurai society, pounds (but does not flatten) the once-idealistic man with unforgettable and incredible bad luck. He endures a number of trials, only to return and discover how dishonorable his elite comrades truly are. And this is only the beginning! However grim the viewer might speculate the outcome to be, there is no second-guessing the resolution of this amazing tale. The climactic fight scene even puts "Enter the Dragon" and "Sword of Doom" to shame.

This is one of Raizo Ichikawa's finest performances, from both the dramatic interpretation and physical prowess standpoints, and it demonstrates why nearly four decades after his early death from cancer, Ichikawa remains one of the most popular Japanese film stars of all time. In a culture that values dogged persistence from its heroes, Ichikawa was one of a very select group of actors who could create a believable model of this virtue.

Before watching "The Betrayal" (Daisatsujin orochi,) I thought only Kenji Misumi could choreograph such brilliant fight scenes, but director Tokuzo Tanaka scored a place at the top with this film. I cross-checked his BO and found that he was AD on "Rashomon" and "Ugetsu." Anyone who sharpened his steel under Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi would definitely have a few good chops, as Tanaka demonstrates here.

Sword of Vengeance

[chaos-rampant · 17 August 2009]

Tokuzo Tanaka will most likely never be mentioned in the pantheon of Japanese directors. For someone who started out as an assistant director to Kenji Mizoguchi, he doesn't seem to have carved out his own niche or acquired those qualities that would mark him separate from the legion of bread-and-butter directors that slaved away in the Japanese studios of the time. Whatever passing popularity the most well known films in his oeuvre have enjoyed is mostly a byproduct of the marketable name franchises he worked in, yet THE BETRAYAL suggests a strong classicist gloom one usually expects to get from directors of Masaki Kobayashi's calibre.

Indeed it is Masaki Kobayashi the opening of the film brings to mind, an evocation of that particular gloomy kind of ancient Greek tragedy transposed in a Tokugawa Japan setting where social injustice is allowed to be perpetrated by a caste of people who can afford to hide the injustice behind a rigid samurai ethos, a skewed code of military honor that can't afford to be proved wrong or found guilty because that would negate that very semblance of honor which sustains it, because a samurai vassal can privately say "we were wrong, you are not the killer we've been looking for" but can't admit the same publicly for fear of dishonoring his own clan.

As good as the central premise of the film is (a samurai vassal agrees to take the blame for a murder he didn't commit for the sake of his clan and exile himself from his home and wife but in the condition that his name will be cleared in one year), as simple and brilliant and classic and lending itself to the combination of gripping revenge drama and scathing anti-samurai critique that made SEPPUKU such an astounding film, the middle of THE BETRAYAL is a bit too disjointed and scattershot, despite the occasional bout of swordfighting spread a little too thin and allowed to sprawl over a dozen different places and encounters that more often than not happen because the plot must be forwarded along. A convincing reason why the exiled samurai takes a peasant as his sidekick for example is never given. He just tags along for the ride so that he can betray Judas-like his master in the end. When the samurai is wounded, a beautiful woman magically comes along to heal him back to life, and whereas this kind of episodic nature is to be expected in a Nemuri Kyoshiro b-movie, the kind of pulpy chambara Raizo Ichikawa and Tokuzo Tanaka knew all too well, it fails to milk the brilliant premise to its full potential. The drama between hunters and hunted is never allowed to gestate and mature past a quick swordfight. Even when the exiled samurai, now hunted by his own clan too, has to face off with his sensei, the outcome lacks the dramatic punch of a Kobayashi or Okamoto, not the dialogue or action but the silent gloomy calm before the storm.

In the end Tanaka almost redeems himself for every opportunity missed by staging one of the most gigantic swordfighting spectacles in chambara history, a giant set-piece that involves Raizo Ichikawa single-handedly cutting down three armies of extras, a fight that were it not for its lack of blood and nihilism would rank up there with the best in LONE WOLF AND CUB. The most telling moment of what's good in the film happens in that fight. Having disposed more than 100 enemy soldiers, Raizo's sword breaks and he's been clutching the grip for so long and so hard that he has to unlock his fingers one by one so he can pick another sword.

Unknown gem

[rainbird131162 · 28 October 2012]

I don't think there's a single drop of blood in it but if vicious, visceral sword fights that culminate in a 15 minute showdown between star Raizo Ichikawa and about 200 samurai are your cup of tea - and they certainly are mine - then I would strongly recommend The Betrayal.

It's a briskly paced riff on the bankruptcy of the samurai's much vaunted 'code of honour' in which Raizo's decent samurai Takuma is set up to take the rap for murder (so as to save his master's son who is the real guilty party) with a solemn promise that the truth will come out after one year in exile during which things will quieten down and he can then return to his fiancée, Namie.

Needless to say things go badly wrong when Takuma's master subsequently drops dead of a heart attack and the real killer denies all knowledge of the bargain leaving Takuma a fugitive on the run. Not only that but Namie is seized by the real killer who intends to make her his wife. As the scales fall from Takuma's eyes all hell breaks loose as the now decidedly bitter samurai cuts a swathe through the corrupt officials and former friends ranged against him while struggling with the dilemma of whether to give in to his darkest impulses.

This theme is expertly developed as Takuma encounters a series of events while on the run that seem designed to confirm all his worst suspicions about human nature and it's one of the aspects that elevates the film to the status of an above average entry in the genre. But just when things seem at their bleakest a wounded Takuma is rescued by a kindly bar hostess named Shino whose trust restores his faith in human nature and the journey back from darkness into light begins. Although bleak for much of its length this is a film that never succumbs to nihilism but embodies a touching faith that humans can struggle and overcome what seems like hopeless odds. And although there's a ton of action the film has real emotional power. A reunion between Takuma and his fiancée Namie in which the former trades his status as a samurai to free Nami from the brothel she's been sold into is genuinely moving (it's also reminiscent of the reunion between husband and wife in Mizoguchi's masterpiece Ugetsu Monogatori (1953).

By the time the climax arrives one is thoroughly invested in the desire to see Takuma and Namie survive. In a stunningly well conceived showdown Takuma is confronted by several hundred samurai and in the brilliantly choreographed swordfight that follows the Monty Python-ish absurdities of the samurai system - they have to try and kill Takuma for 'honour's sake' even though their leader comes to the conclusion that he is indeed innocent - results in a strikingly bittersweet closing shot. Despite the lack of blood one of the film's great accomplishments is - in a succession of lengthy single takes - to make you feel every single exhausting thrust and parry of Raizo's during the quite monumental climax. Best moment; During the final battle, a shell-shocked Raizo having to physically prise his hand off the handle of his broken sword, one finger at a time, so tightly is it gripping the weapon!

The Betrayal is almost completely unknown in the West but if you can find it you're in for a hell of a movie. The whole cast are excellent and Raizo Ichikawa - sometimes mocked for his delicate features - has just the right role here as the thoroughly decent samurai whose betrayal tempts him into the path of darkness. Atmospherically shot by cinematographer Chishi Makiura who did such an impressive job with modest means on the same director's superb Ghost Story Of The Snow Witch (1968), this is an excellent samurai film from an underrated director.