Review of Yojimbo (1961) by Joel D — 01 Mar 2012

Yojimbo (Bodyguard)! When I started watching this film, I was getting excited for because I was going to watch about 1hr.50min of entertainment from genius brain of Akira Kurosawa, and wonderful slightly humor-filled performance from Toshiro Mifune. Call it my bad-luck or whatever, as I watched this film very late, I'd this movie in my collection for some years, and I happened to (even) watch Sergio Leone's masterpiece A Fistful of Dollars, earlier than this, which was a remake of this great celebrated film of its time. But, friends, it was all worth it. Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima brought us one of finest stories to be entertained with, it is both work of wit and art to interlock the entire movie, with kind of how the story is going to affect each and every character in the movie. We have Toshiro as Sanjuro, a wondering Samurai, looking for master to serve, and all he comes across are two factions in a town, trying to hold power for themselves, by showing the other their might. Akira Kurosawa used perfect use of set-design, and made sure, we might not miss every bit of it. Toshiro Mifune's collaboration with Akira Kurosawa, had enabled him to keep most of his trust in director like Kurosawa, and let all of his talent flow through performing in classic movies like this (Yojimbo). I was excited when I learnt that editing work on the film was done by Kurosawa himself. It is one of artistic works by Akira Kurosawa, for Akira's fans like myself.

I pretty much liked a scene at the very end, when he throws a knife, which pierces through (piece) of a paper, fluttering around the room, it was intelligently put in the film by the director, since whole time I was pondering, whether how was Sanjuro going to deal with a gun-fight. A genius work indeed!