Yojimbo

Pros: Story, Toshiro Mifune, Cinematography, Direction
Cons: Film deteriorated, cropped, no extras, expensive

Yojimbo (1961) OK, OK, I know what you're thinking - what could this guy possibly write that would add anything meaningful to the reams of information already published about this Akira Kurosawa flick? If you're asking yourself who or what is ...

Pros: Mifune, and a joyous story to watch unfold
Cons: Some over-acting by the secondary players

The opening credit sequence of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo (The Bodyguard)" features a scruffy ronin, his back to the camera, scratching at his scalp and under his tattered robe. The year is 1860, and Japan's Tokugawa Dynasty has ended, sending a squadron...

Pros: Superb direction and performances
Cons: Japanese names and subtitles make it difficult to keep track of characters

The title of my review of course misquotes Gandhi. However, it accurately sums up the plot of Akira Kurosawa's classic film much better than Gandhi's famous quote. Here we've got a case of a town embroiled in a conflict that leads to "an eye for an eye...

Pros: Kurosawa's Direction, Script, Editing, Cinematography, Music, Sound, & Cast.
Cons: None.

While Akira Kurosawa is famously known for putting the ideas of American westerns into his films, notably his samurai movies. One of his biggest influences from that genre was John Ford who also praised the Japanese director. When the 1960s approached, ...

Pros: Toshiro Mifune, action scenes, cynicism
Cons: The motives of the main character

Akira Kurosawa is well known as being one of the great directors in history, but he’s also known simply as a director of samurai dramas. The Seven Samurai is certainly his most famous film, and Yojimbo is pretty close in stature as well. However, it...

Pros: Poetic cinematography, beautiful pacing, Mifune, Mifune Mifune
Cons: For me? None.

There is not a Best or Worst Remake section at Epinions, and while this review may be technically long enough to be considered a review of .Yojimbo., it is here with other films to be part of the Pearannoyed Then and Again write-off (T & A). So ...

Pros: Strong performance by Mifune; the usual great Kurosawa cinematography
Cons: Overacting in the supporting roles and lack of a truly empathy-provoking hero/antihero

Akiri Kurosawa’s 1962 film Yojimbo ("The Bodyguard") comes with impressive credentials. On the Internet Database poll of most popular films, it ranks 112th, which makes it 14th among non-English language films. It is typically listed among ...

Pros: Beautiful, Exciting, Mifune, Kurosawa, what more could you want?
Cons: Not one.

First, a note on my intent: I plan to develop a series of reviews dealing with Samurai related movies and books. Most of them will be on topics that are definitely within the samurai genre. Others will have a more tenuous connection.

Most of...

Pros: Mifune, classic Kurosawa, the musical score, the evil wife
Cons: I have seen the spin-offs too many times to be fascinated by the plot

This is the story that inspired the first spaghetti Western, FISTFULL OF DOLLARS, and more recently, LAST MAN STANDING, with Bruce Willis. The story holds no surprises for me, having watched Leone's version too many times in a house where only Westerns...

Pros: great scenes, story
Cons: it was the reason they made Last Man Standing...ugh

A wonderful example of how a foreign director can take an American genre and make it better, Yojimbo is one of the best western movies ever made. Ok, its not really a western movie, or is it? Yojimbo is a black and white movie about a samurai who ...

Pros: direction, cinematography, characters
Cons: Mifune the world's greatest swordsman, comic and dramatic mix doesn't always work

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa frequently borrowed western themes for his movies, which in turn became the basis for western adaptations. A good example of this mutually beneficial cultural exchange is Yojimbo. The setting and story...

Pros: Clean, well-crafted, well-directed
Cons: May seem slow to today's audiences

It was the Daniel Pinkwater novel, Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars, that first drew us, indirectly, to this excellent Kurosawa film. Leonard Neeble and Alan Mendelsohn, the protagonists of Pinkwater’s book, receive Yojimbo’s Japanese-English...

Pros: Kurosawa, Mifune, and that's just for starters ...
Cons: None whatsoever ...

While Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key were filmed twice under those titles, both in classic and less-than-classic versions (and The Maltese Falcon was even more loosely adapted as the Bette Davis vehicle, Satan Met a Lady), while...

Pros: lots of swordplay and deceptions
Cons: after "last man standing" even fewer people will see the original

This film was recently re-made as Last Man Standing starring Bruce Willis. While this US film follows the plot of Yojimbo with near perfection, it isn't quite as appealing. This may just be because it is derivative, or because we aren't used to seeing...