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Yojimbo
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by Homevision
Sales Rank: 6374
Price: $29.95
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Kurosawa's blackly humorous film, executed in the style of the American Western, is a sophisticated satire on greed, violence, paranoia, and human weakness. In a nonchalant manner reminiscent of a Bogart hero, a wandering samurai-for-hire (Mifune) turns the war between two clans fighting for control of a small town to his own advantage. One of the most popular Japanese films ever released in the U.S., <I>Yojimbo</I> inspired the Clint Eastwood film <I>A Fistful of Dollars</I>.
Viewer Reviews
Yojimbo is Kurosawa's most popular movie both at home and in the West & it is easy to see why. First and foremost, it's just fun. Combining cool, dry wit, black humor and rousing action; even those who don't "get" the mocking of Westerns or Samurai movies will find plenty to enjoy. Shorter than Ran and Seven Samurai, more accessible than Rashomon or Throne of Blood and more exciting than Ikiru or Red Beard. Yojimbo isn't a masterpiece, though Toshiro Mifune gives an incredible performance. Yojimbo has such a relaxed, sardonic tone to it, I don't think Kurosawa was trying for masterpiece.
As nearly always with Kurosawa, there is, just beneath the easy to follow story, a clever subtext. Kurosawa was one of the few directors who was able to entertain casual filmgoers and the more demanding art house crowd. As an old man, he claimed he was just trying to entertain by telling simple stories. I don't know if he was being coy or modest but it just ain't true. Too many of his movies are too intelligent for him not to be consciously striving for something a bit deeper, often a lot deeper.
Here, Kurosawa is lighhtly mocking both the conventions of Samurai and Western movies. He was, as far as I know, the first Japanese director to realize the parallels between Westerns and Samurais. Both often feature a tough but compassionate, resolute, lone honorable fighting man with consummate skill with a gun or a sword in a frontier world of violence and cruelty. Also, both samurai and cowboy live by an unwritten code of conduct. They may be killers but they only kill the deserved and they mind their manners with the ladies. I've seen a lot of Westerns and a bunch of Samurai and it's fun to compare them to the cynical, clever Yojimbo.
Kurosawa cheerfully exploits these conventions by making his hero into an antihero. Sanjuro is tough and brave. He's also murderous, devious, greedy and not above stabbing men in the back as they try to run away. Not exactly Shane or Will Kane here. However, he often does the morally right thing even as he is scheming and slaughtering. Kurosawa forces the audience to see him in shades of grey. A professional killer who has a soul.
Unlike traditional Samurai movies where the duels traditionally have a stately dignity about them much like the Western practice of duelling, the swordfights in Yojimbo are chaotic and bloody, with swordsmen screaming in terror and running away. He did the same in Rashomon with the knockdown dragout swordfight juxtaposed to the balletic swordfight. Also, notice how coarse and vulgar the Japanese in Yojimbo are in traditionally superpolite Japanese society. Almost as if Kurosawa is simultaneously mocking Japanese and American manners.
Kurosawa is the most immitated of any director in the history of cinema. I guess, if you're gonna borrow, you might as well borrow from the best. Yojimbo has been made into two perfectly enjoyable and far inferior movies: Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing. The original is still the best. It usually is.
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Yojimbo
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