Samurai Assassin (1965)

Kihachi Okamoto builds this around the real Sakuradamon Incident of 1860, when conspirators killed the shogunate's chief minister Ii Naosuke outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle. Mifune plays Niiro, a shabby ronin among the plotters, and the film unpacks through flashbacks how he came to join them. It is a harder, more cynical Mifune than the Inagaki heroes: a thug who does not know what to do with himself, and the film refuses to make him easy to like. Its tangle of politics and conspiracy can make it hard to get into, but it grows on you.