The reviews are unanimous in their approval, and the praise settles on the same two things. Nearly every critic reads the film as an attack on the samurai code, exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy beneath its rituals, and most find that argument as sharp now as it was on release. Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance as the ronin Hanshiro Tsugumo is singled out again and again, and several critics point to Kobayashi’s control of the widescreen frame and to the way the flashbacks are laid against the present-day ritual so that the tension keeps tightening. Takemitsu’s score gets a mention as well.
The spread is narrow. The one real reservation comes from The New York Times, whose critic admires the visual style and the irony of the revenge but finds the storytelling slow and at times obscure. Variety, otherwise admiring, warns that it is not for the squeamish. Nobody disputes what the film is doing; the only question raised is pace.