With a Samurai Rebel Yell!

Samurai Rebellion. 1967.

Ah, Toshirō Mifune. I have a great idea for a book based on you.

Yōko Tsukasa as his best friend. Masaki Kobayashi as the director. Another long slow boil until the film finally erupts into violence. Don't watch the trailer, it gives away too much. Masaki-san claims that Mifune was distracted in this movie because he had just started his own production company, but who'd have guessed?

Mifune finally starts showing his age, looking haggard with bags starting to form under his eyes, and he plays the henpecked father who retires quietly but is stirred back to life when his daimyo makes outrageous demands on his son and daughter-in-law. It's an odd romantic triangle in a sense, but it works. You have to love the Japanese sense of politeness, at least in the subtitling, when a character apologizes profusely while dying from multiple musket wounds, saying, "I can't take you to Tokyo! I am sorry. It can't be helped."

Another best of samurai film in the bag. One of the better ones for building up psychological tension.