MUBI

The inspiration for Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars three years later. Kurosawa and his regular production team, including production and costume designer, Yoshirô Muraki, composer, Masaru Satô, and cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa made another thoroughly entertaining and stylistic film adventure. Toshiro Mifune, who I have loved in the other Kurosawa samurai pictures I’ve seen, is more toned down here. In roughly only a decade since Rashomon, he seems so much more mature. There are scenes of humor because of dimwitted cowardly thugs. In reality, minimal swordplay, since Sanjuro the “bodyguard” relies on outwitting two feuding gangs and hopes to have them wipe each other out. And there are a few nail biting scenes mostly courtesy of Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays the revolver wielding son of one of the gang leaders.

All that you could ask for in a movie, and probably the best entry point for the Kurosawa uninitiated. Seven Samurai is often pointed to as his best, which is true, but it’s also epically long. Ran is often pointed to as the capstone for his career, which is true, but it’s also distanced and formal (and epically long). Yojimbo is, for my money, the best way to start digging into Kurosawa’s filmography.

Its sene of ironic cool still feels current 50 years later. In fact, in a post-camp, post-Tarantino world, its style of comical, violent exaggeration is arguably more at home than ever. An undeniable touchstone in the evolution of cinematic badass—darkly funny, perfectly shot, and tightly structured—it’s probably Kurosawa’s most directly entertaining film. Which is not to deny how richly detailed it is, or how well it stands as a fierce and earnest satire of ruthlessness and corruption (a theme Kurosawa would return to again and again). It feels at home today, yes, but its attitude is also oddly evocative of its time: the start of the 1960s, with rebel yells and challenges to tradition.

And you have to admire any movie that can be described as both “comically violent” and “a moral fable about humility.”

10 out of 10.

Kurosawa, simply put, is a master of shot composition. The way he moves the camera within the frame is nothing short of brilliant, keeping all essential visuals within each shot and not sparing anything story wise in the process. Every Kurosawa film is special, and Yojimbo is no different. Toshiro Mifune completely sells you with his dry wisdom and his compassion from beginning to end. Yojimbo is the perfect example of these two true artists having the best time they possibly can while also executing a perfectly action packed, comical and smart film, a combination that is rarely seen in films nowadays.