Right off the bat, let me say that Toshiro Mifune is spectacular, the single best actor in the Eastern hemisphere. Whether the man is maliciously pompous, heroically headstrong, or full of arrows, Mifune has a presence that is often memorable and always magical.
Yojimbo is certainly the lightest Kurosawa movie I’ve had the pleasure to watch. Usually he deals with epic themes with many more supporting roles than this. I certainly enjoyed the plot, knowing what to expect due to my fascination with Spaghetti Westerns (Kurosawa originally sued Sergio Leone for adapting the film into A Fistful Of Dollars, but said he quite liked the remake years later). I can see how this film is a bridge between American Westerns of the 40’s and 50’s and Leone’s terrific reimagining of the genre in the 60’s. I can also see different plot points of The Glass Key, especially Sanjuro’s time being beaten and held captured. Most articles on the film also cite another Hammett novel, Red Harvest, as the main inspiration. I hope to check this book out sometime in the near future, knowing now that I can handle Hammett’s writing style.
It’s interesting how many of Kurosawa’s films are taken from other cultures, whether it be Hammett, Shakespeare, or Russian Socialist Drama. Even better is how his films resonate back to Western culture and are then proved timeless with their own adaptations, in the way that The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful Of Dollars have This exchange of ideas allow people to see cross-cultural similarities that makes us all feel a lot more familiar with one another.