5 Responses to “Yojimbo & Sanjuro”

• By Francisco Cortes on Mar 12, 2010

  Here are the pros. and conts:

  Good:
  
  * A character use a gun pretending that his hand isn’t holding anything (this idea inspired johnny Depp in One Upon Time in Mexico).

  * There is blood and gore but is not THAT intense. (very similar to the movie Naked Prey in 1965).

  * The wind blowing while Yojimbo walks inspired many japanese animations.

  * The village setting inspired the videogame Way of the Samurai. (The village is the only setting in the movie)

  * Cool moves by Toshiro Mifune.

  * There are many suspense scenes.

  Bad:
  
  * No colors, just black and white.

  * There are like 3 action scenes and only two were memorable, most of the movie is blah,blah,blah.

  * No sword-sound when Yojimbo slash his enemies.

  * There was NO snow-battle in the movie as I expected (I saw this calendar called Yojimbo showing a rabbit dressed up like a samurai with his sword fighting in the snow, I though that would appear in the movie.)

  P.S: This movie didn’t have to be in black and white, the movie Samurai in the 50′s also starting Toshiro Mifune was made in good colors and the movie is also a classic like Yojimbo but if the director Akira Korusawa liked black and white then “bummer!”.

  Adios!
  Rating: 4 / 5
• By Thomas B. Gross on Mar 12, 2010

  I found Yojimbo to be rather boring actually – the movie takes a long time to unfold – not as long as Ran certainly (which I have never watched past the first scene). Eventually the climax is okay, but this is not as entertaining as Seven Samurai or the Hidden Fortress.
  Rating: 4 / 5
• By LF on Mar 12, 2010

  The single most important criterion on which to judge this movie is its interest level. For this, I give it three stars. It is interesting enough to be entertaining.

  Hero enters corrupt town. Two warring factions vie for control of town. Both warring factions are evil. Hero plays them against each other in order to take them both down and restore the town to some degree of health, independent of the bad guys.

  Throughout the movie, hero poses as a mercenary, just out for the money. But hero gives away his money to help those in need.

  We don’t need a lesson in morality, so the only thing to base our review on is how interesting the story is, and it’s pretty good.

  It does not deserve to be called one of the greatest movies of all time. It is not that. The Godfather Part One, for example, is a far superior movie.

  So for those of you who like the name Kurosawa and want to place everything he ever did above anything American, sorry, but this movie by Kurosawa can’t be compared to Godfather 1.
  Rating: 3 / 5
• By JCD on Mar 12, 2010

  Toshiro Mifune plays a samurai who’s just lookin’ for trouble. He comes to a town, lops off some arms, get’s beat up, and then ingages in a battle at the end. It’s really hilarous watching Mifune chop guy’s plastic limbs off. Funniest scene: Dog carries a man’s hand around in his mouth. Tape is letterboxed and subtitled
  Rating: 3 / 5
• By Steven Y. on Mar 12, 2010

  “Yojimbo” is one of the better known films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa because of its notoriety as the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964) and Bruce Willis’ “Last Man Standing” (1996). The film opens with a wandering samurai (Toshiro Mifune) enertering a town being torn apart by bitter business rivals. After being informed of the town’s situation by the tavern keeper Gonji (Eijiro Tono), the samurai decides to play both rivals against each other in the hope that they will wipe each other out. The plan works and soon the chaos he causes reaches the terminal point. When the samurai finally leaves the town, he leaves behind a load of business for the local coffin maker and a liberated and grateful town. Yojimbo does not possess the depth of The Seven Samurai (1954) and its jumping back and forth between drama and comedy is a bit jarring at times. Yet, the film succeeds in entertaining and lends credence to the argument that Toshiro Mifune is not only one of the greatest Japanese actors of all-time, but is one of the greatest actors of all-time period. Try and catch this movie on DVD because the clarity of the subtitles are vastly superior to that of the VHS version.
  Rating: 3 / 5

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