Rurouni Kenshin: Final Chapter Part I - The Final

It is nice to see the return of charismatic fighters such as Takeru Satoh and Shin'nosuke Abe. There are some terrific fights sequences, but frustratingly, the editors chopped it up badly. It also has some grind house elements. Some of the writing was very poor. Efforts to juice up the story nearly ruined it. I wish someone else had been in charge of the post production editing. Worthwhile for the fights, but some of the story was wonky and not so great.

Okay, so this one was disappointing in the sense that they left out so many of the crucial story arcs of what made this last arc so epic in the manga series. This is a shame because the casting was on point (and especially the fact that they brought everyone back after a bit of time), and the performances were good too.

The forth is probable the weakest of the five Rurouni Kenshin live-action films starring Takeru Satoh, but it's not far off compared to the others. It just wastes a little more time in between the awesome action moments and leave questions unanswered for the last and final movie of series. Otherwise it brings a damn entertaining times, even if the darker side of Kenshin starts to get revealed.

Weakest of the series.

12 years after the defeat of Shishio and his generals, Kenshin's peaceful existence is interrupted yet again by the appearance of a mysterious gangster from China with ties to his past. It's an entertaining samurai drama with plenty of excellently choreographed and shot sword fights. After recently rewatching the first 3 films in this series, this one has a slightly repetitive feel of "been there, done that", but it still strikes a nice balance between broody angst and over the top fun.

When the story is lacking, sleek action and theatrics cannot mask the shortcomings of the movie. +1 only for the badass Mumyoi. Weakest so far in the movie adaptations (I haven't read the manga/anime).