Why you can trust GamesRadar+
Takashi Shimura is best remembered for assembling the Seven Samurai (the Yul Brynner role). In fact he made more films with Akira Kurosawa than Toshiro Mifune, and Ikiru is his greatest performance. He plays Watanabe, a lifelong city bureaucrat, a widower with a married son, who scrambles desperately for some meaning to his existence when he is diagnosed with cancer and given only months to live. This theme has been done to death over the last half century (see The Bucket List for one of the more egregious examples) but rarely with the profundity and emotional nuance that Kurosawa finds here. This is the flip side to his samurai films, an introspective, naturalistic contemporary drama combining progressive social criticism with a universal humanist message.
NOVERDICT
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.

Keanu Reeves is returning for John Wick 5 as the franchise expands with an anime prequel series and a Caine spin-off movie

Ex Nintendo PR managers say the Switch 2 generation is likely to see the retirement of "several of the major developers at Nintendo who we have known for 40 something years"

Helldivers 2 CEO says industry layoffs have seen "very little accountability" from executives who "let go of one third of the company because you made stupid decisions"