Twilight Samurai (2002)

"Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel." ~ IMDB

Directed by Yoji Yamada and the first of his trilogy of samurai movies, Twilight Samurai was not what I expected. In fact I found it surpassed all expectations. Rather than being all action and sword-fighting it is a quiet movie which touches on a range of themes - family duty, patriotism, unrequited love, social status, humility, and of course, honour.

Seibei : "I am ashamed to say that over many years of hardship with two daughters, a sick wife and an aged mother, I have lost the desire to wield a sword. A serious fight, the killing of a man, requires animal ferocity and calm disregard for one's own life. I have neither of those within me now. Perhaps in a month... alone with the beasts in the hills I could get them back. But tomorrow, I am afraid, is completely impossible. "