Yojimbo (1961)
★★★★½ — Yojimbo (1961)
Akira Kurosawa made Yojimbo in 1961 for Toho, coming off the back of the celebrated feudal epic The Hidden Fortress (1958) and arriving at a point where his reputation in the West was already well established, thanks largely to Rashomon winning the Golden Lion at Venice a decade earlier. The film draws loosely on the hard-boiled American crime tradition, particularly Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, transplanting its cynical stranger-plays-both-sides premise into Edo-period Japan. The influence ran both ways, of course: Sergio Leone remade it almost scene-for-scene as A Fistful of Dollars just three years later, sparking a famous (and successful) lawsuit from Toho. Yojimbo was also the first pairing of Mifune with Tatsuya Nakadai in an adversarial dynamic, a screen rivalry the two would carry forward into Sanjuro the following year.
So good that countless movies have remade the same story. Toshiro Mifune is quite literally fantastic in every movie. Kurosawa is arguably the best director of all time. You just know, going into this film, that it's going to deliver. Don't get me wrong... it's goofy as heck in places, and a couple of the comedy actors are just caricatures, but that's pretty much the only drawback.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 1961 | Watched: 2025-04-13
Where to watch (UK)
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Akira Kurosawa: High and Low (1963) · Stray Dog (1949) · Throne of Blood (1957) · Ikiru (1952)
More with Toshirō Mifune: High and Low (1963) · Stray Dog (1949) · Throne of Blood (1957) · Sanjuro (1962)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Persona (1966) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Daisies (1966)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
