Yojimbo (No Rating)
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A lone samurai saunters into a barren, wind-wracked town and crosses paths with a stray mongrel carrying a human hand in its chops. It's pure Kurosawa: compiling Western clichés, from liquored-up gamblers to high-noon slashouts--and, in turn, redefining a genre. Like many of Kurosawa's films, Yojimbo (1961) is an adaptation of a Western fiction that went on to inspire countless Western filmmakers. Based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, the tale is set in feudal Japan just as the samurai and royal order has broken down, leaving an unemployed master swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) to pander himself to two crosstown rivals--whom he proceeds to double-cross two times over. Then enters another hired hand, Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), who has given up the sword for his precious pistol. Besides serving as an obvious symbol of the loss of ancient honor and a newly divided culture, the gun reflects Kurosawa's hybrid cinema itself. Sergio Leone would soon translate Yojimbo into the first of the spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars--and the rest is history. As usual, it's West meets East (meets West, again and again). Skeptics and cultural purists, feeling the balance weighs too heavily on foreign influence, may wish to turn to hara-kiri--or perhaps a little anime will do. (Jeremy O'Kasick)
Review by Jeremy O'Kasick
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