It’s a spectacular opening - one that recalls classic Hollywood setpieces, where an entire soundstage might be dedicated to such a scene - and offers fiery foreshadowing of the massive conflagration Shishio has planned for the city of Kyoto later in the film. We’ve already met the film’s new villain, Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), a bloodthirsty subversive covered head to fingertips in bandages, who appears in the first scene like the high priest of some demonic cult, surrounded by a giant burning set and backed by a daunting army of acrobatic fighters. He has been living peacefully in the dojo where Kaoru Kamiya (Emi Takei) took him in during the previous film, and it’s during this monk-lite existence, where he’s accompanied by comic relief Sanosuke (Munetaka Aoki), that a high-ranking officer of Japan’s new government (which has outlawed swords) comes to enlist his help. A strikingly epicene star in a culture where hearts race at the notion of androgyny, Satoh has fair features, long chestnut hair and delicately pursed lips, compromised only slightly by the prominent X-shaped scar on his left cheek - a reminder of the savage dealings Kenshin has since put behind him. No doubt, leading man Takeru Satoh took no such convincing.
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Mind you, it’s not as if “Kyoto Inferno” is short on action it’s just extremely long on feet-dragging, weight-of-the-world hemming and hawing as Kenshin wrestles with how to reconcile the call to bloodshed with his personal renunciation of such.
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Working from a popular arc of the manga series (previously adapted in anime form as well), returning director Keishi Ohtomo provides the first and second acts of his climactic saga, protracted across more than two hours. If that’s true, then this film - which doesn’t depend on audiences having seen part one, filling in backstory via helpful flashbacks - is somewhat justified in serving as the long, patient buildup to an epic payoff.
Rumor has it that the final chapter, “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends,” is a giant, two-hour-plus action extravaganza. And while the expansively imagined, patiently paced project feels far more substantive than a crass cash grab, the conflicted character spends most of the first sequel, “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno,” slowly coming to grips with his burden, leaving things not on a cliffhanger, but in the lurch, with a shocking evasion of violence. Japan has commissioned a pair of back-to-back follow-ups, opening Aug. That’s an admirable quality, until one realizes he’s susceptible to the same sequel pressures as anyone else: When the reluctant samurai laid down his sword in “ Rurouni Kenshin,” he didn’t factor in the pic’s stunning $37 million domestic box office. Unlike most heroes of the Japanese swordplay genre, Himura Kenshin refuses to kill.
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