Yojimbo

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Yojimbo
YOJIMBO
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Music by Masaru Sato
Cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa
Production
company
Toho
Distributed by Toho
Release dates
25th April 1961
Running time
110 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese

Yojimbo is a 1961 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a rōnin, portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy. The two bosses each try to hire the newcomer as a bodyguard.

Based on the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's next film, Sanjuro (1962), was altered to incorporate the lead character of this film.

In both films, the character wears a rather dilapidated dark kimono bearing the same family mon, likely the emblem of his former samurai clan, before he became a rōnin.

Mr Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the 1942 Film Noir movie The Glass Key, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1931 novel The Glass Key. The overall plot of Yojimbo is closer to that of another Hammett novel, Red Harvest (1929).

Kurosawa scholar David Desser, and film critic Manny Farber claim that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the film; however, Donald Richie and other scholars believe the similarities are coincidental.

When asked his name, the samurai calls himself "Kuwabatake Sanjuro", which he seems to make up while looking at a mulberry field by the town. Thus, the character can be viewed as an early example of the "Man with No Name". Other examples of which appear in a number of earlier novels, including Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

Elements

Yojimbo shall strike you for several reasons. First is that large set, on which much of the action hangs. Then there is that stylised character that we find in other films of the age, notably the similar westerns with Clint Eastwood; a man who appears to be magically invincible. In these Kurosawa this is managed by ensemble acting; wherever he goes, it seems that around him, other fighters are instinctively aware that this rōnin is unbeatable.

With Yojimbo, the plot was just that a lone warrior just comes along and saves a town suffering from gang wars by beating them up single-handedly and then asking for nothing in return. It just sounds like an unrealistic, selfless, super good guy hero character. All of the other characters on the other hand seemed to act on the other end of the spectrum: as unrealistic because they are unwaveringly bad and also inept. It seems to stray far from Rashomon's very flawed and human characters. Also the plot never made much sense to me. I never understood why at the end the one gang could just decide to burn down the other gang's house and kill all of them. It seems like a deus ex machina because nothing as far as I could tell changed from the beginning of the movie to the end that now gave the one gang better ability to carry out this attack... except that Toshio Mifune wound them up a bit?

Among other things, the film is a comedy, but Toshirô Mifune doesn't play comedy in the Will Ferrel way. Instead he is subtle in his comedy, and shifts between that, and cleverness, thoughtfulness, desperation, and violence at will. He also plays different roles (as needed to advance his goals) in front of the rival gangs. How many action films can you think of ask this much of the lead and the lead delivers?

Though the film has elements of a comedy and a drama it is obviously an action film first. For that reason, I think it ought to be evaluated as a film in that genre. The worst action films have a good guy a bad guy and good guy vs. bad guy violence is what helps the two resolve their conflict. Better films involve elements like theme, tactics, subplots, and so forth. This film is not one big action sequence. The violence does not take up the bulk of the film, and comes in fits and spurts.



[[Category:Film;;