Izo

Izo is a samurai and assassin serving a lord of the Tosa domain in 1865, as the Tokugawa shogunate enters its final years. After cutting down large numbers of the shogun's men, he is captured and put to death by crucifixion. Rather than vanishing, his fury carries him through space and time into present-day Tokyo, where he takes on a new form and resumes killing. Directed by Takashi Miike, the film was the fourteenth of the forty-two features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between Three... Extremes and The Great Yokai War.

Shigenori Takechi wrote the screenplay, and the cast is led by Kazuya Nakayama as Okada Izo, alongside Kaori Momoi as Saya and Ryuhei Matsuda as His Highness. Hiroki Matsukata, Ryosuke Miki and Masumi Okada also appear among the twenty-four credited performers. The production was handled by Office Kitano, KSS, Excellent Film and Izo Partners.

The film runs 128 minutes and blends action, drama and fantasy. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6 out of 10 from 4,919 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6 out of 10 from 105 votes, a similar audience figure across very different sample sizes. A critics' rating of 4.8 out of 10 from six reviews is lower than the audience scores on both platforms.