Sanjuro (1962)

23 Februrary 2017

Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962) are two Akira Kurosawa films starring Toshiro Mifune as a hungry samurai that gets dropped into villages to solve problems. Yojimbo tells a complex story of the samurai playing sides in a feuding village; Sanjuro's story moves between a samurai chess match and keeping hotheads out of trouble. The main character effortlessly carries himself both as master swordsman/tactician and chilled out bum throughout both films.
Sanjuro suffers a little bit because the supporting characters are a little too dense, but both films are pinnacle representations of that samurai genre. These kind of classics are the reason I try to catch older films as often as I can. (Yojimbo: 10/10; Sanjuro: 9/10) 9/10