"Despite the wartime setting, this is not at all an action movie but rather a twist on how the safety of enclosed worlds can recreate the conditions of imprisonment. That Araki stands his ground boldly but ignominiously on a policy to not only preserve his prisoner, but in fact to avoid killing all together, all the while scheming to end the larger war around him, centers [Kiyoshi] Kurosawa's cerebral, discursive, and ultimately abstract wartime film ironically on the theme of mercy in a society at war with itself."
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@danielkasman on THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER: