My favorite samurai film. Fell in love with it right away and have since watched everything adapted from Shuhei Fujisawas work, and while I love almost all of it Twilight Samurai is still my favorite. I'd love to read his books instead of only watching adaptations, but whomever is in charge of his estate refuses to sign off on translations so the single collection of stories from over a decade ago is all there is. Glad I bought it years ago as it now routinely sells for 20-30 times what I paid for it.
I love the setting. It always feels strange to me that my least favorite part of a samurai film is the fighting, seeing as it plays such an integral part of most of them. It's hard to blame Koei for utilizing the 'One Man Kills Thousands' style of combat in the Warriors series when most samurai movies eventually have a scene where one man is constantly surrounded by swords on every side and yet he wades through them all, while they take turns meeting their end. Nothing of the sort here, outside of the short duel, if you can call it that, in the middle of the movie there's just the one battle at the end between two men, neither of whom truly wants to be there.
I wish there were more movies where the samurai are the focus rather than the swords.