YOJIMBO Movie Review
1961 Akira Kurosawa
Though some sources give mystery writer Dashiell Hammett partial credit for the script to this seminal adventure tale, it really belongs to Akira Kurosawa. He may have borrowed the concept of a lone man playing two opposing forces off against each other, but he simplified and streamlined the story so effectively that it owes little to Hammett. Variations on the theme show up in many of his other films, too, but he has seldom approached it with such single-minded diligence.
Title cards set the scene: “The time is 1860. The emergence of a middle class has brought about the end to power of the Tokugawa Dynasty. The samurai, once a dedicated warrior in the employ of Royalty, now finds himself with no master to serve other than his own will to survive … and no devices other than his wit and sword.”
Such a samurai is Sanjuro Kuwabatake (Toshiro Mifune). His given name translates to “Mulberry Field,” but he's such a hardcase that nobody laughs at him. Ever. Sanjuro is a twitchy, itchy, no-nonsense kind of guy who, when we meet him at a crossroads, doesn't know what to do with himself. In one of the movies' most famous establishing shots, he walks into a desolate small town, where he sees a dog running down the street with a human hand in his mouth. This, he realizes, is his kind of place. It's run by two warring gangs of gamblers, one controlled by Seibei (Seizaburo Kawazu), the other by Ushi Tora (Kyu Sazanka). As Sanjuro tells his first ally, the local bartender (Eijiro Tono), “I get paid for killing. Better if all these men were dead. Think about it. Seibei, Ushi Tora, gamblers … pretty nice to get rid of them.”
He would have no problem taking care of things straightaway if it weren't for Ushi Tora's younger brother, Nosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), who has a revolver.
The rest of the plot is a series of neatly duplicitous tricks and lies that Sanjuro uses to keep his opponents off balance. By comparison, the scenes of violence are short, explosive, and surprising. The first swordfight, where Sanjuro dispatches three opponents, is finished in five seconds. In part, at least, contemporary action films can trace their roots directly to Yojimbo. Sergio Leone remade the film as the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, where more graphic depictions of explosions and gun violence gained some of their first mainstream acceptance. In Kurosawa's hands, however, that kind of action is only one part of the film, and not the most important part.
Working with his longtime collaborators, production and costume designer Yoshiro Muraki and director of photography Kazuo Miyagawa, he tells the story within a few blocks of this small town, giving the film a self-contained reality. That quality is reinforced by the chilly autumnal atmosphere. Most of the characters keep their arms tucked inside their kimonos for warmth, and the streets are often scoured with blowing dust and dry leaves. To keep the grim environment and the largely unsympathetic characters from becoming too oppressive, Kurosawa lightens the film with broad stripes of comedy. Even though Mifune turns in one of the screen's greatest macho kick-ass performances, he gives Sanjuro a self-mocking quality, and he gets scene-stealing support from moon-faced Daisuke Kato, who plays the henchman Ino as the fourth Stooge. Finally, Masaru Sato's music, clearly inspired by Nino Rota, sets the right unpredictable but elegiac tone.
As the opening title cards suggest, this is a story about a warrior who has outlived his era. His sword is an anachronism in a time of firearms. The social order he once fought to uphold has vanished. To overcome his opponents he must rise from the dead, both literally and symbolically. The single act of mercy that he shows almost gets him killed, and at the end of the film, he's no better off than he was at the beginning. None of the remakes has come close to capturing that bleak vision.
Cast: Toshiro Mifune (Sanjuro Kuwabatake), Eijiro Tono (Gonji the sake seller), Isuzu Yamada (Orin), Seiz-aburo Kawazu (Seibei), Kamatari Fujiwara (Tazaemon), Takashi Shimura (Tokuemon), Tatsuya Nakadai (Noosuke), Daisuke Kato (Inokichi), Yoshio Tsuchiya (Kohei), Susumu Fujita (Homma), Hiroshi Tachikawa (Yoichiro), Kyu Sazanka (Ushi Tora), Ko Nishimura (Kuma), Ikio Sawamura (Hansuke), Yoko Tsukasa (Nui); Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Ryuzo Kikushima; Cinematography by: Kazuo Miyagawa; Music by: Masaru Sato. Producer: Akira Kurosawa, Ryuzo Kikushima, Tomoyuki Tanaka, Seneca International Films. Japanese. Awards: Nominations: Academy Awards '61: Best Costume Design (B & W). Running Time: 110 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, 8mm, Letterbox.