AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

suspiria77 Way back towards the end of the '90s, I saw this film on IFC and it was my very first Kurosawa film. It came on at about 10 in the morning on a Saturday, and I stopped because the film looked so distinctive. The widescreen, the black and white, and Toshiro Mifune just looked so cool standing there. It wasn't far into the movie, but after being mesmerized by what I had seen I immediately looked online to where I could buy it (in widescreen, of course, which was not a given back then) and watched it about ten times within a week. Not long after I discovered Sanjuro and all of the rest of the Kurosawa/Mifune masterpieces. It's truly amazing to watch this and notice how current it feels, how the pacing is perfect, how funny it is, how sudden the violence takes place, and the overwhelming sense of danger that constantly envelops the entire film.It's brilliant, it's fun, and it's always entertaining, it's simply a masterpiece of filmmaking.

Takethispunch In 1860, during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate,a rōnin (masterless samurai) wanders through a desolate Japanese countryside. While stopping at a farmhouse, he overhears an elderly couple lamenting that their only son has given up farm labouring in order to run off and join the rogues who have descended on a nearby town that has become divided by a gang war. The stranger heads to the town where he meets the owner of a small Izakaya who advises him to leave. He tells the rōnin that the two warring clans are led by Ushitora and Seibei. The silk merchant and mayor back Seibei while the sake brewer is allied with Ushitora. But after sizing up the situation, the stranger says he intends to stay as the town would be better off with both sides dead.

sharky_55 The opening credits are overlaid on the back of a samurai's head, and his feet, ragged sandals and all. Close-ups that give little indication of where he is going, until a dog turns up with a human hand and a father and son quarrel on giving up a boring life for high stakes gambling and fighting. He observes, even as he is momentarily pushed out of frame - he adjusts his shoulders, scratches his head, and continues on in his worn out clothes, clearly signalling that the time of the samurai is coming to an end. The violin is foreboding and in mourning. Some versions will insert ugly English captions over this sequence, but Kurosawa is not one of those directors that needs this sort of aide. Slowly and surely, we begin to understand this rōnin, this master-less warrior, the lonely wanderer of the western. He continues this facade as he enters the town. As he first encounters Ushitora's band of mercenaries, he is surrounded and buffeted by both background and foreground, and the mass of bodies and that gigantic hammer dwarfs him. Later, as he effortlessly cuts down three of them and establishes his ability, they eye each other on equal grounding. He makes a quip towards the casket maker that rivals Harmonica's about horses. He then walks with the same walk as he opened with, but which now carries an air of dominance and dismissiveness that he rides for much of the film. And the two sides react appropriately; they slobber over him, shower him with gifts and offers in hope of his allegiance. Kurosawa makes the two sides distinct. The town is conveniently aligned much like the prototype western settlement, with a runway down the middle for those dramatic confrontations. To the side, innocents peep out from behind shutters and bars, too frightened and held hostage by the warring factions in their little village. There are some immaculately detailed shots that layer several perspectives in their deep focus; the worrying father, the conceding mother, Sanjuro musing. There is a genius segment in the inn, where Sanjuro observes the conflict from all perspectives. First he physically separates the two sides of the frame from the centre, as Inochicki goads the casket maker and he thinks on his approach. Then, he tracks and follows the band of thugs through the windows, and then finally unveils both sides and their various allegiances. Gonji, the inn owner, provides running commentary, but it is the power of Kurosawa's images and compositions that stand on their own. He cackles from high above on the bell tower, as the two sides inch towards each other and struggle to commit the opening blow. The other character who is unafraid of action and bloodshed is the snake-eyed Unosuke, in one of Tatsuya Nakadai's finest performances (perhaps second only to his gaunt King Lear in Ran). His eyes are bottomless pits of black that gleam with anticipation of violence, matching his devilish smile. He brandishes the deadliest weapon in the film, a little metal gun that signifies the coming age and the death of the sword, and unleashes it without hesitation. In the finale, Sanjuro seems to recognise this defeat even within his victory, and offers a surrender to a gun that may or may not be loaded. Opposing these pure moments of drama are the scenes that seem to make up the dark comedy aspect of Yojimbo. These meld less seamlessly than Kurosawa might have liked. There is the oafish, heavy-set Inochicki with the monobrow and not an ounce of brains who hurries from fight to fight. The constable Hansuke giggles and scurries like a scared little rat, if only to further the illusion of a town in chaos and disorder. And in one peculiar moment, a weak Sanjuro makes his escape in a casket, but then insists on being let down in order watch the Seibei house be burnt down because it "sounds interesting".But what comes after that is so magnificent. A hanging corpse in the foreground forces the eyes to the stumbling, beaten figure that stands in the midst of billowing smoke and ash (so powerful that Leone would later mirror this same exact shot, among others). One man versus a gang, slowly shuffling towards each other as the cymbals and hi-hat provide an eerie rhythmic tension that would not be out of place in a Morricone score. There is no longer the sense of swagger and otherworldly strength that Sanjuro and the samurai of the old possessed, even as he dispatches the group...but there is a message for the fleeing trembling boy, that seems to echo a sentiment from the beginning of the film. The age of heroics is over, the gun is here...and those who cannot bear to take part in the coming massacres best run home to mommy.

Christopher Culver Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film YOJIMBO is a Japanese period drama where wily strategy is worth just as much as prowess with a sword. In the late Edo era (some decades before its end in 1868) a community is plagued by two opposing gangs who have built up a criminal empire of prostitution and gambling. Even the local officials are on the take. Into this town steps a nameless samurai (Toshiro Mifune). Once they get a taste of his swordsmanship, both sides want to hire him, but he decides to play them off against each other and free the innocent citizens from this evil.In past films Kurosawa had taken advantage of Mifune's ability to produce exaggerated facial expressions of laughter and fear. Here, however, the nameless samurai is completely unflappable, while it is the criminal bosses and corrupt officials who play the clowns. Ikio Sawamura is a town constable constantly toadying to the gangsters, for example, while Isuzu Yamada gives a memorably sassy performance as the madame of a brothel. In what would become a convention of the Japanese period drama, the numerous henchmen in the gangs were apparently chosen from the most grotesque men that Kurosawa could find (each furthermore has distinctively ratty attire), and one thug is played by an actor suffering from gigantism.That darkly comedic drama between the characters coexists with brutal violence. Yet, while audiences may have been shocked in 1961 by the samurai dispatching his opponents with realistic slashing sound effects and a hacked off limb, there are only a handful of fights here, and they are all over in a flash. (Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of Mifune's acting is his speed in executing the sword moves.) While Kurosawa delights in gangsters getting their comeuppance, he doesn't revel in gore.Much has been said about how this Japanese film would inspire Westerns made in America and Europe (Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was a straight-up remake). However, the film is also interesting for how it draws so much on influences from the West. Kurosawa's inspiration was an American crime caper by Dashiell Hammett, the samurai's walk down the main street is drawn from the Westerns of John Ford et al., the soundtrack mixes Japanese music with Western instruments such as harpsichord, and Tatsuya Nakadai's pretty-boy looks are clearly modeled on Hollywood.All in all, I was very impressed by this film. Everything here – from the script and aspect to little things like the wind and dust and the little decorations on the set – seems the result of great effort and talent, all coming together to impress the viewer. And like Kurosawa's RASHOMON, it stays fresh even as its elements have been repeatedly reused by other film and television productions for half a century now.Note that Kurosawa would go on to use Mifune's character again the next year in the film SANJURO, and the two films are often considered together.