Watch Yojimbo Full Movie

[Twyla Plack]

Ive always had a sentimental affection for antiheroes, from Nic Cage's Yuri Orlov straight back to Milton's Satan. It's no surprise, then, that I enjoyed Yojimbo, Akira Kurosawa's skillful fusion of archetypes from gangster movies and Westerns. Toshir Mifune plays Sanjuro, a samurai with no master, and from the first shot, you know he's going to be something of a Byronic hero.

Kurosawa follows him with the camera from behind all through the credits. He towers over the mountains! To gaze upon his face is to gaze into the abyss! And so on. By the time he turns around, he's gotten the heroic stature he'll keep throughout the film. Which is not to say he's a conventional hero. At the film's opening, he more or less randomly wanders into a town with, shall we say, something of a violence problem. Townspeople watch him walk down the main street from behind windows, but no one's outside. No one, that is, except for the happiest dog in the world, bounding down the street:

Yes, that's a human hand. And yes, David Lynch stole this for Wild at Heart. The great thing about the dog eating the hand is this: it's a joke. One person jokes about it briefly afterwards, but that's it. As far as I could tell, you never see whoever had their hand cut off. It seems Tarantino didn't completely invent referenceless violence.

In the samurai movies I've seen so far, where there's a town in trouble, bandits can't be far behind. Yojimbo is different; the town is tearing itself apart. There are two warring groups of criminals, and nearly everyone is associated with one or the other (the two exceptions are a man who runs a restaurant of sorts, and the coffin-maker). Rather than trying to save anyone from anything, Sanjuro sticks around because, as he puts it, "In this town, I'll get paid for killing. And this town is full of men who'd be better off dead." Then he gleefully plays both sides against each other for his own profit. You can see visually what he's up to here:

That's Sanjuro at the top of the tower, watching both sides preparing to kill each other (they don't--they're interrupted). And you can see how he feels about the prospect of observing this kind of slaughter in closeup:

He could be watching the best circus in the world. As you can see, he's not a hero in the Shane mold, the kind who's slow to rile, but uses violence when absolutely necessary. This is a man who introduces himself to the townspeople by killing three men for no good reason; he resorts to violence early and often, and he takes genuine pleasure in it.

Things go according to his plans for the first half of the movie (which is to say, both factions gear up to annihilate each other and offer him increasing amounts of money to side with them), until the unexpected arrival of Unosuke, a more valuable fighter than Yojimbo. See if you can figure out why he's such a terror on the battlefield:

I'm not sure why Unosuke has a sword as well as a revolver, but as you can see, Sanjuro's swords are outclassed. Is Unosuke an honorable fighter, there to remind Sanjuro of the ideals he betrayed by becoming a mercenary?

Yojimbo may be predictable, but a movie built around a Byronic hero like Sanjuro doesn't need to have a fresh plot to succeed. It just needs to make sure that its antihero is fun to watch. Toshir Mifune's performance is truly exceptional, and saves the movie. He has a kind of lazy cool about him that owes more to gangster movies than Westerns. Check out his expression below: the man closest to him has just said, "Kill me, if you can!"

Mifune chews on his toothpick, looks at him with the "are you sure?" expression you see in the still, and deadpans, "It'll hurt..." The man draws his sword, Sanjuro shrugs his shoulders, remarks, "No cure for fools." Then he kills the man and two of his friends. And a new screenwriting clich was born, the "action-hero-wisecrack-before-slaughtering-enemies" so beloved of the Die Hard movies. I suppose it's unfair to blame Kurosawa for John McClane (though it would make a great dissertation). Mifune's performance is such swaggering fun you can forgive Yojimbo its excesses, its cartoonish characters, its unlikely plot turns. The pleasures this film has to offer are all on the surface; no one will ever call it insightful or penetrating. But if you're willing to spend a few hours coasting on the surface of things, you could do worse than watching Toshir Mifune destroy a town for fun and profit.

3 Kurasawa (Kurasawii?) down, 11 to go. I like his films, but seems a bit much.

I just looked at the list, and Bergman wins with a total of 16. I barely made it through 2 Bergmans. I could never do it. Do you think Criterion makes a point of giving a couple of directors so many slots?

Yan, I think it's a combination of two things. One is that Criterion has a close relationship with Janus Films, which still controls American distribution rights for an incredible percentage of foreign films of the fifties and sixties (I think they were about the only company buying these rights from 1955 to around 1965, when other studios started to get interested). So Kurosawa and Bergman movies are easy for Criterion to get rights to, unlike, say, Hitchcock movies. The other thing, I guess, is that someone at Criterion loves both directors. Bergman, by the way, baffles me also, but all I've seen so far is The Seventh Seal. Have you ever looked through Criterion's old laserdisc catalog? Because laserdiscs were such a specialty market, American studios gave Criterion the rights to a lot more movies--there's still a lot of Bergman and Kurosawa but I think it's an interesting list as it seems to be what they would release if rights were no object. Some of the movies are pretty surprising: Ghostbusters, From Russia With Love, and, of all things, Evita!

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo is ok, and as a avid Zatoichi fan I must admit I enjoyed this depature from the fairly formulalic series. It's a much better than the equally hoaky team up between Zatoichi and the One Armed Swordsman. (a famous Shaw Brothers character)

Take a look at a Janus films videotape release of a Kurosawa film, or try to see one of their prints screened sometime. The original subtitles are very interesting. For instance, in Yojimbo, when Mifune is confronting those three guys, one of them says, in the subtitles: "Don't mess with us! We're dangerous men! I've got the death penalty in three districts!"

Then Mifune whips his sword out and cuts one of their arms off.

The Criterion discs have been largely re-subtitled, but those original subtitles are what would of been on the films if you'd seen them in say, the late-60s to the late-70s--if you were watching them while writing a Kurosawa influenced epic space opera, for instance.

Yes, the sword is a symbol of status, but I look at it more as the criminals wear swords because samurai do -- NOT because they tehmselves are samurai.

My take on Sanjuro is a little different. He's not destroying the town, he's saving it. Saving it for the poor folk, even though he despises that they won't stand up for themselves.

And the guy with the jitte? He's the 'town official'. Who the criminals mostly leave alone because it's bad juju to off the local official -- expecisally if you've already bought him.

The Zatoichi stuff is interesting, and also NOT samurai. Zatoichi spends his time nearly exclusively in the underclass, while not seeming to be touched by it.

The dog-hand is certainly not just a joke. It is a zen reference to Huike, the first disciple of Bodhidharma, who cut off his hand in order to attain enlightenment. Toshio is searching in the scene, searching for some sign to guide him about the desolate town he has found himself thrown into. In very many ways this search is a prolonged one which is evident throughout the movie. Toshio is searching, while walking the middle path between the two factions, very similar to Huike in his own search for enlightenment, walking down the Buddhist middle path.

The Zatichi film is, as you call it, shameless. It plays off superficial aspects of both Katsu's and Mifune's characters, in a rather mindless plot exercise. To their credit, not all the Zatichi films are such cheap fare. The one's directed by Kenji Misumi were significantly better; from what I've been given to understand, he had a lot of influence on subject, development, and composition. I've seen Zatichi and the Chess Expert twice, and enjoyed it on both occasions. The "surprises" aren't even surprising the first time through, but then, the Japanese evidently like to know such things in advance, and enjoy watching how well such things are done, instead.

The moment a dog runs down the street with a hand in its mouth, you would think Yojimbo would be an action fest, but that is not the case, instead, it focuses on the cleverness of the samurai and how he strategically handles the opposing businessman by acting as a bodyguard (a Yojimbo) to both sides. I loved watching Sanjuru scratching his chin, thinking of what to do next, and how he gets so amused to watch things play out. Such as climbing to the top of a central bell tower to joyfully overlook the battle about to take place, and at one point he even puts himself at risk so he can watch to see how the events in which he initiated are playing out. The action that does occur in the film from the Samurai is swift, as it probably should be when someone comes at you with a sword, and Sanjuro quickly shows why he should be feared. Again, this is not a bloodshed movie, like later films in the genre tend to be, but instead, one that focuses on the clever mind of the warrior.

If you are looking to share a Samurai or Akiro Kurosawa film with your friends, Yojimbo is a film that you probably cannot go wrong with. It has the western influence, a remarkable score, a strong and clever samurai, and it is widely entertaining.

Regular readers of The Big Picture Magazine will probably be aware of my passion for Japanese film in general and for Mifune in particular. I am under the spell of his energy and his creative acting, which is sometimes extravagant, sometimes subtle, but even in his most stereotypical roles always captivating, not least due to his perfect timing.

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