I first read about The Betrayal in Patrick Galloway's excellent book Warring Clans, Flashing Blades. Galloway highly praised this film starring Raizo Ichikawa from the Kyoshiro Nemuri/Sleepy Eyes of Death series.
For most of the film's running time I was somewhat surprised by Galloway's enthusiasm. The plot involves an honorable samurai (Ichikawa) who allows himself to go into exile after a samurai of a rival clan is stabbed in the back (well, slashed actually). The honorable samurai did not commit the deed, but because the ones who did will not come forward, our hero agrees to leave the area and thus become the prime suspect of the killing. The hero sacrifices his happiness for the good of his clan. Supposedly, this exile is only to be for a year while the clan's boss works out a deal with the rival clan, but things do not go as planned.
Most of the film charts our hero's growing disillusionment with the samurai code. The Betrayal is not the only film to cover this ground. Harakiri, Onibaba, Samurai Rebellion, and Ugetsu have all, in more meaningful ways, called into question the role of the samurai. Therefore, while I liked the story well enough, I did not understand Galloway's praise. That is until I got to the film's last twenty minutes. When the hero finally has to face his former clan, the viewer is treated to a dizzying killfest that approaches the Lone Wolf and Cub movies (no blood sprays or severed body parts though). Ichikawa sells this sequence. He throws all of his energy into this action scene.
I am still not as gung-ho about the film as Galloway was. I find it just a slightly above average programmer (admittedly, a downbeat one) until that finale. However, that is some ending sequence.
