Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Alex da Silva Dr Takashi Shimura (Sanada) is a local doctor in Japan shortly after the war has ended. The district he works in is in decay and is ruled by gangsters. The scary gang leader in this particular locale is Toshiro Mifune (Matsunaga). He gets the girls and he doesn't pay for things on market stalls - he's the main man. One problem, though, he's ill with TB and visits the Dr. Here begins an unlikely friendship. It's tempestuous. And you can say that again! One day, the previous gang leader Reizaburo Yamamoto (Okada) is released from prison and returns to town.....The film mainly concentrates on the relationship between Dr and patient and we get a lot of humour out of this interaction. They are both nuts! And they both like a drink. If you're going to boss the town, don't get yourself into a drunken, paralytic stupour. You need to be in control. You don't find the drug dealers at the top of their game actually taking the drugs they distribute. They run things as a sobering business. Just a top tip for anyone interested in pursuing this avenue. The film develops at a slow pace but it is more of a character study of the 2 main actors. The "drunken angel" refers to the Dr as he can't help his passion for putting people right but he's also a bit of a lush. I had a doctor like that until recently. He retired early to spend more time drinking in the local pubs. He also didn't mince his words just like our drunken angel of the film.

TheLittleSongbird I am a great fan of Akira Kurasawa's films(or a vast majority of them anyhow) and find Toshiro Mifune a very multi-layered actor. Drunken Angel is not one of Kurasawa's or Mifune's very finest, but of their early work it is one of their stronger efforts. The film is beautifully made and Kurasawa's direction is as delicate and humanistic as ever. The music is simple, but effective in that. I loved the story as well, the realist drama parts are very poignant and the gangster parts have cracking suspense and tension, while the characters and script are just as gripping. Toshiro Mifune would give even better performances in later films, but his performance in Drunken Angel is not bad at all, in fact it is great, very charismatic. He is matched wonderfully by another Kurasawa regular Takashi Shimura.So all in all, a fine gripping film even if even better films from Kurasawa followed. 9/10 Bethany Cox

bbrooks94 Akira Kurosawa's crime drama about the uneasy relationship between an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) and his unruly patient, recently diagnosed with tuberculosis, a small-time Yakuza hood (Toshiro Mifune) is utterly brilliant. This was Kurosawa's first film with Mifune (the greatest actor/director collaboration of all time? Add Shimura in there as well and you have the greatest threesome in cinema's history), who shines as the troubled but ultimately frustrating criminal. The sympathy we feel for Mifune's character doesn't feel genuine, he digs his own hole to an extent, yet the gritty and violent ending leaves you with a bitter feeling inside. One of regret. Shimura outshines Mifune as the doctor, a lovable drunk full of angst and regret at the state of post-war Japan, desperate to save those around him, not only through medical assistance but through instilling in them a social awareness, in an attempt to rebuild the crumbling Japan of the 1940s. He is a lone, ignored hero. Yet, the final moments provide us (and him) with some hope for the future. A very troubling and poignant experience.

Luis Guillermo Cardona Happy encounter between master Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune great actor. Started the shooting of the film, the script was fully focused on the character of Dr. Sanada, a temperamental physician, sharp and heavy drinker, but at the same time noble and condescending, who played the wise actor Takashi Shimura, member of the filmic family of Japanese director. It was to show the ambivalent relationship of singular physician with some of his patients, and Mifune's character, a gangster named Matsunaga, who arrives to take you off a "nail", was intended as one more among Sanada's patients... but behold, the amazing performance of Toshiro delighted the visionary director leaves, and soon, his character is extended to the point of putting one on one with which interprets Shimura. And thus would begin a relationship that would lead to outstanding a number of films that are today the most significant part of which gave us the Far East ("Stray Dog", "Rashomon", "Seven Samurai", "Throne of Blood", "Yojimbo", "Red Beard"...).The story is set in a poor village, where gangsterism is a source of survival and power. The rain water inundated streets unpaved, and the mud then, becomes a leitmotif for Kurosawa reveals the sinking of being in the midst of alcohol and irresponsibility, and perhaps, the abandonment of a State for all miss opportunities.The Sanada and Matsunaga characters, move in an interesting love-hate, I accept you-you rejection, live and die, that accounts for human ambivalence where what seems is not as it seems.The doctor's character is also quite interesting, because he realizes the man with no pretensions, no worries of enrichment, and the ability to perform so naturally, falls in the act shamelessly unfair, in the sentence harsh and in the alcohol allows him to escape, at times, a reality that don't is offering great prospects. It is thus a portrait of ordinary people, viewed sympathetically and with the clearest assessment features. It is clear that Kurosawa, knew well the people.