Review of Yojimbo (1961) by Brandon W — 11 Sep 2010

For those of you who don't know Akira Kurosawa is basically the Martin Scorsese of Samurai films and has done more to influence the American Western in the past 50 years than even Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. He has created numerous classic pure cinema productions of stories of his home land and among them The Seven Samurai served as the basis for popular film series The Magnificent 7 and Yojimbo is almost frame for frame the original Samurai version of Fistful of Dollars. I'm serious replace the cowboys with Samurai that's what you get for the film that started it all for Eastwood and Leone. Beyond that though Yojimbo's a fantastic film in its own right, it's god a compelling story, some pretty badass acting, very unique wide angled directing and a final action scene that pays off pretty well especially for 1961. Modern cinema fans might even notice a line Kill Bill lifted from the end of this movie. Even for those people not at all interested in foreign, especially not Japanese films this movie has a lot to offer.

Now don?t get me wrong I?m aware the film is influenced by early Western Pictures by the likes of John Wayne and John Ford, which inspired all those wide angled shots but it set the archetype of the hero helping out the town being ravaged by hooligan outlaws and more closely laid the foundation for the action of later Western films than any others. So with that in mind you almost have to forgive the plot for being pretty basic, a samurai Kuwabatake Sanjuro (played with a stiff faced degree of bad ass by Toshiro Mifune) passes into a town being torn apart by two warring factions and after deliberation, the deciding factor being one group captures and tortures him, he picks a side and helps rid the town of the bastards. Now obviously the final fight scene is awesome, though Kurosawa would have even better action scenes over the year, but my personal favorite scene that I think is shot so cool is when Sanjuro is sitting atop a kind of watch tower in a meditative pose watching the fight take place between the two samurai while he still can?t decide who he should side with I just think it?s such a cool shot scene and the kind of stuff only the setting of feudal Japan could make look normal.

As far as acting goes it?s hard for me to judge or pick a stand out performance as the language isn?t in my native tongue but one I particularly enjoyed that stuck out for me was Takashi Shimura as Tokuemon a grumpy old sake brewer who houses Sanjuro and hates the youth of Japan for what they?ve done to the town and his business. Beyond that it really is just standard Japanese fair the bad guys sneer and look smug, the hero has a kind of cocksure smug grin on his face the whole time and everyone else either looks scared or angry with the whole affair. The production value of the film considering the time it was made is frankly astounding, aside from great cinematography especially in the beginning and end scenes when Sanjuro overlooks Japanese mountains I would like to examine one scene in particular I thought was just genius. At one point one of the factions believing he?s sided with their enemy attacks and beats Sanjuro to near death and leads him to bleed out. He recovers in Shimura?s hut and starts practicing throwing his knives the equivalent of guns in the samurai western equation. He actually very believably while practicing picks off a fluttering leaf with the knife skewering it. This obviously would have been hard to actually accomplish but what they did is film in reverse the knife stuck in the leaf coming out and the leaf fluttering away. I have to admire the ingenuity of Kurosawa?s film making for that.

Beyond that it?s a wholly entertaining culturally enriching samurai western. It has little things that you catch on to from subsequent viewings like how Sanjuro claims his first name to be Kuwabakate though while he is being asked that he?s looking at a flower called the same thing (a man with no name huh) and the aforementioned line that would later be lifted by Kill Bill. It?s entertaining, it?s pure cinema, it?s well done and a must see for any movie fan.