REVIEWED - THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI/TASOGARE SEIBEI: While its title might conjure up the prospect of a lavishly choreographed Asian action spectacle, The Twilight Samurai is primarily a humanist character study, although it does contain several bouts of sword-and-stickplay.

It's set in a small town in the northeast of Japan in the 1860s, in the dying years of the feudal system. There is famine in the region and the bodies of starved children float in the river.

The drama's protagonist, Iguchi (Yoji Yamada), is a lowly clerk who, as the film opens, is preparing for the funeral of his wife. His colleagues mockingly describe him as the twilight samurai because, when they go drinking after work in the evening, he rushes home to do all the housework and to care for his two young daughters and his senile mother. Deeper in debt after paying for his wife's funeral, Iguchi wears tattered clothing, and a visiting clan leader is appalled at how smelly he is.

There is the prospect of a new relationship when, after years apart, Iguchi meets his childhood sweetheart, Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), who has left her physically abusive husband. She clearly would be happy to spend the rest of her life with Iguchi, but he is ashamed of his status at the wrong end of the samurai tiers. And, as a pacifist, he is reluctantly drawn into action when several challenges are presented to him.

A huge hit in Japan and an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film this year, The Twilight Samurai is a graceful, reflective drama that is impeccably designed and strikingly photographed. Its director, Yoji Yamaja, is a veteran with over 70 movies to his credit - 46 of them romantic comedies featuring the popular Japanese handyman character Tora-San.

Yamaja plays out the tender melodrama of The Twilight Samurai at a stately pace and stages the action sequences with classical simplicity and without special effects.