YOJIMBO Movie Review

Akira Kurosawa's breathtaking, cynical, hilarious Yojimbo is the story of a lone samurai (Toshiro Mifune) who wanders into a new town controlled by two warring clans. Equally disdainful of both, the samurai sells his services as a yojimbo (bodyguard) to both sides, profiting handily while scheming to arrange their mutual destruction. Yojimbo has a loose, casual feel—as if the events taking place are being worked out as we watch—but it's actually a meticulously designed accomplishment on both a narrative and a technical level. The movie's legendary violence doesn't take up all that much screen time; what there is, however, is high impact. Early in Yojimbo is a famous moment in which a dog strolls lazily across a wind-swept street, carrying an object in its mouth. As he approaches the camera, we can see that the object is a severed human hand. Kurosawa doesn't stop there, though; the dog get closer and closer, well after we've identified what he's carrying, until it's right in our faces. Kurosawa's made a comedy, all right, but he's letting us know that we're not getting off the hook too easily—the violence is going to be, in every sense, “in your face.” It was a moment that would be expanded upon by American filmmakers during the remainder of the 1960s, culminating in the horrifying juxtaposition of comedy and violence in Bonnie and Clyde. Yojimbo's roots, though, are clearly in the American western, and the film ironically became popular in the United States at a time when American westerns were appealing less and less to upscale audiences. (Three years later, Yojimbo would be remade, as a western, but in Italy, by Sergio Leone. The central role in A Fistful of Dollars would be played by Clint Eastwood, and would propel him—and Leone—to a whole new level in their careers. A vastly inferior version by Walter Hill, Last Man Standing starring Bruce Willis, would finally bring the story home to America for what would be its worst incarnation. And Bernardo Bertolucci still talks of filming Dashiel Hammet's Red Harvest, the book on which Yojimbo itself is reputedly based.) Mifune would play the same character in a charming but much lower-key sequel, Sanjuro. Masaru Sato's score for Yojimbo is great, as is the widescreen cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa. Warning: if you don't see Yojimbo in a letterboxed version, it will not only not make sense, but you'll completely miss the best visual gags.

NEXT STOP … Sanjuro, Rebellion, A Fistful of Dollars

1961 110m/B JP Toshiro Mifune, Eijiro Tono, Suuzu Yamda, Seizaburo Kawazu, Isuzu Yamada; D: Akira Kurosawa; W: Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa; M: Masaru Sato. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘61: Best Costume Design (B & W). VHS, LV, 8mm, Letterbox VYY, HHT, NOS