Review: This samurai movie is unlike any that we've seen; first of all it's more of a drama than an action movie. Secondly the movie focuses on the subject of homosexuality in the samurai context, the title Gohatto means forbidden or taboo which would point the movie towards more of a cultural taboo. This is certainly an uncommon topic for this kind of movie thus making a pretty original story. The story is long and complex, you will need to pay close attention and some people might find it boring. Also there is a lot of dialog that you will have to pay close attention to, if English is not your first language you will have trouble with some of the duel meanings in the dialog. We are sure this movie looses something in the translation, as the dialog is very important.

There are a few characters in this movie that are important, the tricky thing is sorting out who is and who is not important to the story. Since they are all in a military group it takes a while to figure out ranks and purpose, which can be misleading for a while. The acting is also very good, the characters are very well played and are convincing in their roles. There were various character developments, which were important, but these were not openly obvious and yet again you need to concentrate on the story. We did not find any of the characters really stuck out, they were all evenly important to the story.

On the action side of things, this was really a slow paced movie; the focus was placed on the story and drama. One thing that was interesting was the samurai practice fight, we found the fight to be very realistic looking, the fighting was basically simple and what you'd expect from a real samurai. Another cool thing in the movie was the scenery and costumes, the feeling of the samurai age was really brought to life, not to mention that the uniforms were really cool. Keep in mind that this movie is very slow paced and you must pay extreme attention to the story that has a few interesting twists.