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Tarfumes.com - Yojimbo
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $2.99
Your Save: $ 26.96 ( 90% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Homevision
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yôko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katô
Directed By: Akira Kurosawa
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303202051
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6303202055
Label: Homevision
Manufacturer: Homevision
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Homevision
Release Date: 2000-06-13
Running Time: 110
Studio: Homevision
Theatrical Release Date: 1961-09-13
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Editorial Reviews:
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Kurosawa's blackly humorous film, executed in the style of the American Western, is a sophisticated satire on greed, violence, paranoia, and human weakness. In a nonchalant manner reminiscent of a Bogart hero, a wandering samurai-for-hire (Mifune) turns the war between two clans fighting for control of a small town to his own advantage. One of the most popular Japanese films ever released in the U.S., Yojimbo inspired the Clint Eastwood film A Fistful of Dollars.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wit and a Sword !!
Comment: Kurosawa's YOJIMBO is a classic of the genre, and easily ranks as both my favorite Kurosawa and my favorite samurai flick. This is a must-see film!
I won't delve into the plot, for if you're familiar with "A Fistful of Dollars" (which was inspired by Yojimbo), then you already know the story. Kurosawa masterfully tells the tale of a lone samurai warrior (played by the excellent Toshiro Mifune) who wanders, by chance, into a town with dueling factions and what then befalls all. The black-and-white photography works well, nicely accentuating the town's corruptness.
If you enjoy this movie, then I would strongly recommend that you also see SEVEN SAMURAI (another Kurosawa classic and again starring the incomparable Mifune).
[A quick note regarding this DVD version...a number of other reviewers have reported problems. I haven't had any issues, myself -- the image appears in letterbox form on my standard-format (4:3 aspect ratio) TV. And the image quality, for me, is more than adequate (and MUCH better than when I had first viewed Yojimbo, many many years ago, as a 16 millimeter print that had been cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio).]
Customer Rating:
Summary: Japanese Samurai and American Western Send-Up
Comment: Yojimbo is Kurosawa's most popular movie both at home and in the West & it is easy to see why. First and foremost, it's just fun. Combining cool, dry wit, black humor and rousing action; even those who don't "get" the mocking of Westerns or Samurai movies will find plenty to enjoy. Shorter than Ran and Seven Samurai, more accessible than Rashomon or Throne of Blood and more exciting than Ikiru or Red Beard. Yojimbo isn't a masterpiece, though Toshiro Mifune gives an incredible performance. Yojimbo has such a relaxed, sardonic tone to it, I don't think Kurosawa was trying for masterpiece.
As nearly always with Kurosawa, there is, just beneath the easy to follow story, a clever subtext. Kurosawa was one of the few directors who was able to entertain casual filmgoers and the more demanding art house crowd. As an old man, he claimed he was just trying to entertain by telling simple stories. I don't know if he was being coy or modest but it just ain't true. Too many of his movies are too intelligent for him not to be consciously striving for something a bit deeper, often a lot deeper.
Here, Kurosawa is lighhtly mocking both the conventions of Samurai and Western movies. He was, as far as I know, the first Japanese director to realize the parallels between Westerns and Samurais. Both often feature a tough but compassionate, resolute, lone honorable fighting man with consummate skill with a gun or a sword in a frontier world of violence and cruelty. Also, both samurai and cowboy live by an unwritten code of conduct. They may be killers but they only kill the deserved and they mind their manners with the ladies. I've seen a lot of Westerns and a bunch of Samurai and it's fun to compare them to the cynical, clever Yojimbo.
Kurosawa cheerfully exploits these conventions by making his hero into an antihero. Sanjuro is tough and brave. He's also murderous, devious, greedy and not above stabbing men in the back as they try to run away. Not exactly Shane or Will Kane here. However, he often does the morally right thing even as he is scheming and slaughtering. Kurosawa forces the audience to see him in shades of grey. A professional killer who has a soul.
Unlike traditional Samurai movies where the duels traditionally have a stately dignity about them much like the Western practice of duelling, the swordfights in Yojimbo are chaotic and bloody, with swordsmen screaming in terror and running away. He did the same in Rashomon with the knockdown dragout swordfight juxtaposed to the balletic swordfight. Also, notice how coarse and vulgar the Japanese in Yojimbo are in traditionally superpolite Japanese society. Almost as if Kurosawa is simultaneously mocking Japanese and American manners.
Kurosawa is the most immitated of any director in the history of cinema. I guess, if you're gonna borrow, you might as well borrow from the best. Yojimbo has been made into two perfectly enjoyable and far inferior movies: Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing. The original is still the best. It usually is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yojimbo - Remastered Edition (Criterion Collection Spine #52)
Comment: Terrific fild - I just really like this actor and this production and this story. Great fun!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Kurosawa...
Comment: A masterful performance by Toshiro Mifune, great dialogue, great direction and cinematography; A MUST SEE film which deserves your time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Ancestor of the lone cool-hitman stereotype. A masterpiece in samurai films.
Comment: Toshiro Mifune made the first most important contemporary portrayal of the mercenary assasin stereotype ruling the collective imagery of all genres concerning action and thrilling crime-ganster films today. The dysfunctional sense of honor and selfishness carried by this lightning sword skilled hitman, mixed with the poetic, artistic and always then-controversial style and aesthetics of the samurai genre product of the talent and incredible filmic values-portrayal of the master filmaker Akira Kurosawa, gave birth to a legendary new improved vision of an anti-hero, a good guy that takes no value on human life, but attached to an incredible and respectful sense of honor and devotion of the code of the warrior.
That fundamental contradiction was the foundation of the "cool" incredibly talented cold hearted mercenary, a sense of justice and rightgeous standards according to a sense of being with a new attitude: boredom, disgust for the oponents and mankind, greed, the selfish guarantee of self protection, but never leaving the unavoidable values code proper of the japanese samurai culture. The flea beaten amoral ronin walks the fields looking for oportunities of "work", slashing unknown oponents with fierce rapid talent for an incredible amount of money, setting a standard about the real values of human life and the economic costs of affording such a collosal protection. A bodyguard like this can't possibly be trusted, only if you deserve to die as well. That twist of the honor values shaked the then-preserved rules in story direction, because Mifune's character wanted to clean the filth of the feud-torn village by making the best economic profit throught cold blood deceiving . That plot was smilar to 1952 "High noon", but Kurosawa's brilliant visual style was almost out of known proportions.
Toshiro Mifune's incredible performance and now classic no-expresions capted the attention of Sergio Leone for his own spahetti western remake "A fistful of dollars", presenting for the first time the cowboy stone-cold killer, bullseye shooter portrayed by Clint Eastwood. These two movies are the root and essence for today's standards and the very mythology of the anti-hero mercenary sub-genre. Check Snake Plitsken of "Escape from new york", see anything familiar? Leon the professional, perhaps?
This movie, along with being a monumental masterpiece in world filmaking, is the very bible or code for the lone hitman culture. The most amazing part about the honor and values in the film: We don't care at all, totally overwhelmed by the concept itself. Blinded by "coolness" we cheer for the despicable but heroic Sanjuro, and hope for the bad guys a painful agony, just to receive seconds of sword fight and lightning deadly slices and dismemberment. Not even the revolver, representing progress and cowardice, can't stop the furious raging blade of Sanjuro.
My tribute to this outstanding masterpiece of all times in the most incredible DVD edition available.
My invitation to meet, or enjoy again, this precious action and samurai philosophy work of art. My respects.
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