ma-cortes Set in Japan , 1860 , at a little town that is a den of wrongs . Sanjuro, a wandering samurai enters a rural town in nineteenth century Japan and he finds himself the location run by two parties commanded by Ushitora and Seibe and their hired thugs . The samurái sells his activities to both parts with devasting resulting for all ; as he then sets out to rid the town of all these ominous people .The noisy town is full of injustices , inequity , violence and killings , due to the hordes of gamblers and murderers that inhabit it. After learning from the innkeeper that the town is divided between two mobsters , he plays one side off against the other . As 2 clans vying for political power bid on the services of a silent masterless Samurai , a quiet Ronin . His efforts are complicated by the arrival of the wily Unosuke who often uses a bloody gun . There is a massacre , but the samurai runs away with the help of the innkeeper ; but while recuperating at a nearby temple, he learns of an abduction carried out by Unosuke, and goes back to the town to take on enemies . This is a magnificent picture by Akira Kurosawa starred by his ordinary actor Toshiro Mifune , being his international breakthrough one . Yokimbo , the picture blends drama , violent fights , emotion , slaughters with high body-count and results to be pretty entertaining as well as thought provoking . It is incredibly detailed vision in its own right , as the impact of the action and combats on this trail-blazing adventure film opened the floodgates for the huge numbers of samurai films and subsequent Spaghetti Westerns that made fortunes for their producers in the sixties and early seventies . Dramatically staged sword-plays occur on and off throughout the plot . The known film Leone¨For a fistful of dollars¨is mainly cribbed from this Japanese samurái action classic ; however , some reviewers tell this Yojinbo bears little resemblance to Sergio Leone film . Very good acting by Toshiro Mifune as a Samurái who attempts to play the two warlords off against each other . This one made an international star out of Toshiro Mifune . At the beginning , Sanjuro seems to be a good Samurai , as being beaten after he reunites an abducted woman with her husband and son, then massacres his father's opponents. As well as Tatsuya Nakadai , still acting , as Unosuke, the son of one of the gangsters, who owns a revolver.This fiercely-charging , uncompromising pictures was compellingly directed by Akira Kurosawa and being exhibited with subtitles or dubbed .After working in a wide range of genres, Kurosawa made this awesome film . The previous years saw the low-key , touching Living (1952) , the epic The seven samurais (1954), the barbaric , fascinating Shakespeare adaptation Throne of blood (1957) , a Macbeth's version , a masterful rendition that transports the story to Medieval Japan , and a fun pair of samurai movies Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962) , and Rashomon , often credited as the reason the Academy created the "Best Foreign Film" category. When this film was released internationally to rave reviews, many speculated that Akira Kurosawa was influenced by Citizen Kane (1941) in the element of flashbacks that ultimately provide conflicting accounts of events. However, Kurosawa didn't even see Orson Welles's film until several years after . Rashomon won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West.Yet , there was a quieter side to Kurosawa's nature , expressed most succinctly on Living , The Lower Depths and especially the medical drama Red Beard . After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide . Other important movies were : The idiot based on Feodor Dostowieski , Drunken Angel , Scandal , A quiet duel , Tiger's tale , High and low . He survived, and made a small, personal, low-budget picture with Dodes'ka-den (1970), a larger-scale Russian co-production Dersu Uzala (1975) an epic tale of adventure in turn-of-the-century Siberia and , with the help of admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the samurai tale Kagemusha (1980), which Kurosawa described as a dry run for Ran (1985), an epic adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" . He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990), and Madadayo (1993) and Rhapsody in August . Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where reviewers have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors with suspicion , but he's revered by American and European film-makers, one of his least well-known films but most agreeable pictures is The Bad Sleep Well , a transposition of an Ed McBain detective novel , being remade many his pictures such as The seven samurais (1954), as The magnificent seven (1960),The Hidden Fortress (1958), as Star Wars (1977)as Yojimbo (1961) as For a fistful of dollars by Sergio Leone (1964), in fact Kurosawa's style was the biggest single influence on the Spaghetti Western sub-genre ; as his Samurai 'Western's were copied not only in America but also in Italy .

classicsoncall The term 'yojimbo' means a bouncer or a bodyguard. Sanjuro Kuwabatake (Toshiro Mifune) arrives at a small Japanese village with two warring factions looking for a means to thoroughly defeat the opposition once and for all. Seeing an opportunity to turn his samurai talent into cash, Sanjuro seeks out the leaders of both factions in an attempt to up the stakes with each one. In that regard, Sanjuro has no particular loyalty, and can be swayed by the highest bidder. Or can he? I had to laugh the first time the clans of Seibei and Ushitora first opposed each other in the street. Both sides proved equally cowardly in their failure to engage the enemy, it bordered on the comical. I was impressed though by the size of Kannuki the Giant, the guy was massive. He reminded me a bit of Japanese wrestler Shohei Baba, better known in this country as Baba the Giant, active around the time this film came out in the early Sixties.There was a bit of a disconnect in the story for me when the opposing clans felt they had to break from their fighting when the inspector from Edo came to the village. My question was 'why'? What kind of penalty was the inspector going to impose if clan members wound up killing each other? There's really no satisfactory answer to that, that I can think of, and there was none offered in the story. It just seemed irrational to me.I think what I might have to do here is revisit this film once again later on as I did with Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", which I didn't find that compelling the first time around but gained a greater appreciation for it with a second look. I did like Toshiro Mifune in this one though, consistently going back and forth between the warring leaders to constantly confound them by contradicting his prior intentions. Had the opposition leaders had any smarts at all, they would have gotten together to take him out first.

Anssi Vartiainen A lonely mercenary arrives in town, finding it torn between two feuding families. Seeing a chance to earn a few coins he decides to sell his services as a killer to the highest bidder. In the process he ends up escalating the feud, turning the families against each other even worse than they already were. Sound familiar? That might be because this Akira Kurosawa film was remade in the West a few years later. Starring Clint Eastwood, the film was named A Fistful of Dollars. Perhaps you've heard of it.Keeping that in mind, the film is a fascinating watch. So many of the idiosyncrasies of spaghetti westerns can be explained by the fact that ultimately they're based on Japanese samurai films. The lonely, wandering hero. The gruff antihero that still ends up saving the day. The corruptibility of officials.It's also to be kept in mind that this is an Akira Kurosawa film. And quite honestly one of the best ones I've seen from him. The setting of the town is not all that big. A single street with a few important buildings, really. Yet it is used beautifully and the viewer becomes intimately familiar with it throughout the course of the film. Full props to Toshiro Mifune as well, playing the lead character, the cold and lethal ronin, who still hides a beating heart beneath his tattered clothes. One of his defining roles for a reason.Is the film without flaws? Not entirely. The musical cues are sometimes less than subtle, which is actually pretty common with Kurosawa, and the fight scenes, inventive though as they are, lack certain polish. A sword might miss by several hand-widths, yet the opponent still screams and falls. Small touches like that.Still, the story and the characters are so great here that I'm fully comfortable calling this better than A Fistful of Dollars. Not by much, but it does beat that classic. And that's saying something.

tankace Yojimbo is an extremely important film for the film industry of in indirectly helped the spaghetti western been born as Sergio Leone pretty much copied the plot and made it a western which we now know it as A Fistfull of Dollars. It is a bit shocking for that times I felt that I was watch the same film with the only difference been the setting.To the plot as the Shogan period of Japan is ending the samurai are in mass fired because they don't have any role to play in this new world and here we meet our protagonist a ronin ( samurai without a master) who stumbles in a village which is ruled and terrorized by the two families there and so he starts to playing each other in order for them to be destroyed in their little war. To do show he uses his wits and great sword skills to create chaos. In general Kurosawa here shows us the samurai as bullies and a-holes who are in charge only because are better armed. As for our protagonist though he is the good guy he uses quit the unhonourable tactics to achieve his goal to free the village from its tyrants, which wasn't the norm for the samurai ,who there whole ideology ,the Bushido, was focused in honor and service, but as the era of the Samurai is over so to for that code and our ronin gives zero f***s about honor and he has a much more practical approach of the type "the ends justify the means".Also the setting was nicely made and you will find yet an other inspiration of an other film ,from a Galaxy Far Far Away ,but you have to look closely to find it.Over all I enjoy it and I respect its impact in film culture even though it was done through plagiarism.