The most surprising thing about this Samurai-genre period film by Japan’s Akira Kurosawa is that it just might be one of the best Westerns ever made.
Sure, Yojimbo is about samurai, not cowboys, but it looks and feels every bit a Western. Of course, if you’ve seen many Samurai movies, that may not come as a surprise to you: the samurai – at least in pop culture – are essentially the cowboys of the far east.
Plus, this was not the first Samurai film Kurosawa made that was inspired, at least in part, by the American West. Nor was this the first Kurosawa movie to inspire Westerns; most famously, The Seven Samurai was remade into The Magnificent Seven.
Yet of all the Kurosawa films I’ve seen (I am on an on-again, off-again mission to watch a great many of them), Yojimbo undoubtedly felt the most like a western. This might have something to do with Kurosawa’s effort to make it so, but it also has a lot to do with the great impact this film had on all Westerns made after it, not to mention its impact on all other cinema.
The story opens as a wandering samurai enters a small town that is being torn about by rivaling gangs. The samurai at one point calls himself “Kuwabatake Sanjuro” (meaning “30-year-old mulberry field”), but we never find out his real name, and thus this movie created the “man with no name” archetype which was later used in Sergio Leon’s “Dollars Trilogy” starring Clint Eastwood.
This is probably what makes Yojimbo so accessible to Western audiences. We are familiar by now with the mysterious, misunderstood stranger who may be a little rough around the edges (and a stone-cold killer), but deep down he has a hard of gold.
But getting back to the story, the samurai is played byToshiro Mifune, long time collaborator of Kurosawa’s and Japan’s greatest movie star. Mifune is nothing short of remarkable in this movie. The ease and subtlety with which he expresses the range and depth of his character is amazing to behold. His character is at times charming, threatening (like when he is killing lots of people), and comical. It is his best performance that I have seen so far.
Kurosawa had a great amount of respect for Mifune: his peerless acting ability, combined with his physical agility, and his consumate professionalism. You had to admire the guy! Indeed, he does seem to be quick with his sword. On one of the DVD special features, Kurosawa remarks how Mifune’s character is at one point able to kill ten men in ten seconds. Yep, pretty fast.
Kurosawa does a pretty good job here, too. He uses lots of long lenses to great effect, along with interesting camera angles and movements, and this is all backed up with great cinematography.
But technical elements aside, this is just one of the more enjoyable Kurosawa movies I have seen. It has good action, good comedy, good acting, good writing, and a good story. It’s just fun. But it is not just a good Kurosawa movie, it is a good movie, period.
Been listening to this one a lot, pretty much the whole way through.
This novel was published after the Chilean-Mexican author's death, and I'm not even sure if it was entirely finished or not. It is broken up into five parts which, while connected, stand pretty much on there own. I have not yet made it to the grim part about the murders of hundreds of women in Mexico, so I have so far found it enjoyable and even funny despite some dark underpinnings. It's had a ton of critical praise, and I like it much more than my last foray into the violent novel genre: Blood Meridian.
