Yojimbo

UPC: 715515055918

Studio: Criterion

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Violence, Questionable for Children]

Summary: Toshiro Mifune portrays a Samurai who finds himself in the middle of a feud-torn Japanese village. Neither side is particularly honorable, but Mifune is hungry and impoverished, so he agrees to work as bodyguard (or Yojimbo) for a silk merchant (Kamatari Fujiwara) against a sake merchant (Takashi Shimura). He then pretends to go to work for the other, the better to let the enemies tear each other apart. Imprisoned for his "treachery," he escapes just in time to watch the two warring sides wipe each other out. This was his plan all along, and now that peace has been restored, he leaves the village for further exploits. Yes, Yojimbo was the prototype for the Clint Eastwood "Man with No Name" picture A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The difference is that Fistful relies on Eastwood for its success, whereas Yojimbo scores on every creative level, from director Akira Kurosawa to cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa to Mifune's classic lead performance. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Adventure

Awards: Best Foreign Film – null Best Black and White Costume Design – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Volpi Cup for Best Actor – Venice International Film Festival Best Foreign Film – Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Features: Audio commentary by film historian and kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
A 45-minute documentary on the making of Yojimbo, created as part of the toho masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: it is wonderful to create, featuring Kurosawa, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, production designer Yoshiro Muraki, and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Teruyo Nogami
Theatrical teaser and trailer
Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
Plus: a booklet featuring as essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and comments from Kurosawa and his cast and crew

Yojimbo

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 03/23/2010

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DHMA null

Runtime: 110 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitles: English

Region: Blu-ray region A (North America, Central America, South America, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia)

Jonathan Crow

Yojimbo is both a brilliant reworking of the samurai genre and arguably director Akira Kurosawa's most influential work. Toshiro Mifune gives the finest performance of his stellar career as Sanjuro, a bored, flea-bitten, and thoroughly amoral ronin who possesses almost superhuman swordmanship. Like a Greek god descending from Mount Olympus, Sanjuro comes upon a village torn asunder by two rival groups and cleans up the town. Like Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952), Sanjuro finds himself in a village full of greedy, weak, and bad people that probably does not deserve saving. Unlike Cooper, whose face grows grim with the moral importance of his act, Sanjuro smirks with anarchic glee as he deftly picks one side against the other. With a wry, subversive wit, Kurosawa marries his muscular narrative to a swaggering visual style, aided by the masterful cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa. From the Sanjuro's final duel with young gun-toting thug Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) to the single grotesque image of a dog clutching a human hand at the film's outset, Yojimbo crackles with a dynamic energy that rivets and entertains. Though Yojimbo spun off a number of remakes, including Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing (1996), none matches the film's technical brilliance and dark humor. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Ikio Sawamura  Actor 
Yoko Tsukasa  Actor 
Takashi Shimura  Actor 
Yoshio Tsuchiya  Actor 
Yosuke Natsuki  Actor 
Atsushi Watanabe  Actor 
Akira Nishimura  Actor 
Susumu Fujita  Actor 
Akira Kurosawa  Director 
Akira Kurosawa  Screenwriter 
Hideo Oguni  Screenwriter 
Tomoyuki Tanaka  Producer 
Ryuzo Kikushima  Producer 
Ryuzo Kikushima  Screenwriter 
Masaru Sato  Composer (Music Score) 
Toshiro Mifune  Actor 
Eijiro Tono  Actor 
Tatsuya Nakadai  Actor 
Isuzu Yamada  Actor 
Seizaburo Kawazu  Actor 
Daisuke Kato  Actor 
Hiroshi Tachikawa  Actor 
Kamatari Fujiwara  Actor 
Kyu Sazanka  Actor 

Country: Japan