• Member Since 15th Dec, 2017
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Scholarly-Cimmerian


A guy who loves movies, comic books, video games, as well as stories with colorful talking ponies in them.

More Blog Posts250

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Nov
29th
2018

Movie Review: Yojimbo · 4:44pm Nov 29th, 2018

I've been meaning to write this one up for a good while now.

But last month I finally got to watch my first Kurosawa movie, all the way through.

And believe me, as a cinephile, that was a special experience.

For those of you who might now know, Akira Kurosawa is a Japanese director, with a career that spanned the course of 57 years, and is considered one of the most influential and important filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is most popularly known for his samurai movies, and his films have had a tremendous impact on a variety of directors and their own work: visionaries such as George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Hayao Miyazaki and Spike Lee have all expressed their admiration for Kurosawa's work and named him as an inspiration.

A few months ago I had ordered a collection of two of Kurosawa's samurai movies: Yojimbo and Sanjuro. And in October, I sat down with my dad (who had seen it before, along with several other Kurosawa films) and watchedYojimbo.

Set in 1860, Yojimbo opens on a lone ronin / masterless samurai warrior (played by Toshiro Mifune), wandering the countryside. His drifter's path takes him to a village that is divided by a gang war. Gonji (Eijiro Tono), the local tavern owner, advises the ronin to leave, and when pushed to explain, fills him in on the situation:

Originally there was just one gang in town, led by Seibei (Seizaburo Kawazu), with Ushitora (Kyu Sazanka) as his right-hand man. However a schism occurred between the two when Seibei decided to give control of the gang to his feckless son Yoichiro (Hiroshi Tachikawa); Ushitora took many men with him and started his own gang, and the two men have been at war for control of the town. Each gang boss has his own "legit" business that they're backing as well: Seibei has the town mayor and silk merchant Tazaemon in his pocket; while Ushitora backs the town's sake brewer Tokuemon, declaring him the new mayor.

Both sides vie for control of the town, the local constable Hansuke (Ikio Sawamura) is blatantly corrupt - even taking bets on who will kill who...

And the only person really happy with the situation is the local coffin-maker, who is doing good business off the gang war. (A good recurring joke is an irate Gonji yelling through the wall at the coffin-maker for building more coffins. It adds a nice touch of humor to this expository segment, demonstrating the tavern-owner's sheer exasperation with things.)

After sizing up the situation, the ronin decides to stay in town, stating that things would be better off if both sides were dead.

From there, the wily nameless ronin begins his plan to destroy both sides of the mob war.

And thus begins a brilliant game of manipulation on the ronin's part, as he sets about playing the two mob factions against each other.

To go into serious detail on the ronin's playing of both sides would spoil a lot of the impact of the movie (as there is both a lot of fun, and suspense, to be had in seeing the lone samurai play on the paranoia and fears of the two desperate bosses), so I'll keep things brief.

The ronin (who finally gains a name when he takes the alias "Sanjuro") starts off by planning to lead Seibei into destroying his forces in a direct confrontation with Ushitora, but when that falls through, he settles for more subtle methods.

However, while he is able to play Ushitora and Seibei with skill, another character arrives on the playing field: Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), the brother of Ushitora, and a clever-minded gangster who also has a gun - the only firearm in the town.

Unosuke is by far the cleverest and most dangerous gangster in the movie, and that makes him a formidable and personal enemy to Sanjuro.

All of which leads up to a stunning, veritable masterpiece of a climactic showdown between the ronin and the gangsters... Seriously, the finale of Yojimbo had me on the edge of my seat in excitement and anticipation. Kurosawa definitely knew how to build up a movie and get the audience's investment in it.

A big part of that is through how skillfully the movie uses tone. Due to the gang war, the threat of violence is omnipresent, creating an atmosphere of tension for many characters. When violence does break out, it's swift and even shocking (I legitimately gasped the first time that Sanjuro kills someone in the movie, because of how rapidly the violence occurs, then finishes - far more impressive, and memorable, than a flashy duel or many action scenes). Like I said in my review of Unforgiven, this is a movie that understands restraint in its storytelling, building its action up to the final climactic fight, instead of just presenting spectacle after spectacle.

The major characters' personalities are distinct and well-performed by their actors. It's easy to pick up an animal motif with some of the characters: Toshiro Mifune was reportedly told by Kurosawa that his character was like a stray dog, and as such Sanjuro is an archetypal jerk with a heart of gold: he's coarse (often scratching himself, in a distinct character tic), devious, self-assured, and treats the closest thing he has to a friend like crap, but he involves himself in the mob war because ridding the town of criminals is the right thing to do. His actions save many people, most particularly a family of peasants under the heel of Ushitora.

If Sanjuro is a stray dog, then Unosuke is definitely a snake. The crafty gangster moves with a slinking kind of walk, almost a saunter, and rarely blinks, giving him an unsettling stare that immediately marks him as being far more dangerous than his more gullible brothers. These character tics - plus the uniqueness of his revolver in a movie where every other fighter is armed with swords - make Unosuke stand out all the more as a memorable villain.

The other characters have distinct traits that make them stand out in different ways. The innkeeper Gonji is a fun character because of his sheer exasperation with the gang war, his disbelief in Sanjuro's plan to take down the gangsters, and eventually comes to support and even provide assistance to the wily ronin's plan.

The gangsters' ranks, besides Unosuke, contain some other entertaining presences. While Ushitora is a very basic character, his gang has two memorable characters in the form of dimwitted Inokichi (Daisuke Kato) - a burly thug who at times seems too dumb to be a gangster - and Kannuki (Namigoro Rashomon), a truly gigantic thug whose massive size (he towers over everyone in the movie) and distinctive face mark him immediately amongst the other hoods of his gang. Seibei's own gang is notable mainly for the man's own family: Seibei himself is an aging gangster with a shrewish wife and a pathetic loser for a son, there is a lot of dark humor to be had in seeing one half of the gang war's leaders being a henpecked husband.

On a final character note, the town constable is a fun figure, mainly because of how blatantly corrupt and pathetic he is. Nobody has any respect for him at all (Sanjuro quite hilariously tells him to go hang at the conclusion of the film), yet the constable is usually so upbeat about the shitty state of the town that it's actually kind of impressive. XD

Yojimbo is a masterful film in many ways. It's a story that is filmed by a master cinematographer, with some spectacular images and sequences; uses timing, buildup and tone to convey suspense, humor, action and drama without missing a beat. It's a samurai movie, but one that clearly draws from the Western movie tradition to bring together the two styles of filmmaking and make something immediately unique - even with the numerous imitators of this movie (chief among them A Fistful of Dollars) - the original by Kurosawa still stands on its own as a movie well worth watching.

Highly recommended.

Comments ( 4 )

Nice review!

4974412
Thank you very much. :twilightsmile:

I put a lot of thinking into it, I really wanted to do the movie justice without explaining every single thing about it. XD

Nice. Can't go wrong with a Kurosawa classic. This is one of the ones I haven't seen yet but I'll have to get around to it one day. Have you seen Seven Samurai yet? I think that one had some of the biggest cultural impact to it as so many have borrowed from it's premise.

4974690
Indeed, can't go wrong with a Kurosawa film. XD

I've seen part of Seven Samurai. Not all of it, but about half an hour or so. Was still damn good filmmaking so I would like to catch up on the rest of it someday.

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