Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo is of that peculiar strain of great film that is not merely a summing up of particular styles and genres but one that encapsulates generic strains (in this case, the western and the samurai film) and then proceeds to explode the elements sky high, leaving a new type of film in its wake. The results of Yojimbo were immediate and continuous -- stretching from Leone to Peckinpah to Eastwood to Scorsese to Miike. After Yojimbo everyone jumped onboard. Quite a heavy burden to bear for a film that is so much fun.

Toshiro Mifune stars in his iconic role of Sanjuro, a rootless samurai looking to make ends meet by hiring himself out as a bodyguard. Striding into a dirty, windswept town, the populace peering at him from behind closed doors, he discovers the place is ready to blow into civic violence with two merchants hiring groups of unsavory gangsters to destroy the other and take over the town. But even the cynical Sanjuro is taken aback when he sees a filthy dog cantering down the main street with a human hand in his mouth. Sizing up the collection of stumblebums and clowns that make up the riff-raff gangsters (he even strides confidently through a mongrel pack of killers, a collection of societal dregs that include a psychotic idiot and a monstrous giant with a very large mallet), he hatches a scheme to play the two factions against each other and hire himself out to the highest bidder, Sanjuro states his case, "I like it here. I'll stay awhile. I'll get paid for killing and this town is full of men that deserve to die." All is working according to plan until a cagey new arrival appears in town, and he has a gun. Then Sanjuro's amorality falls by the wayside and the town erupts into an apocalyptic fury.

Kurosawa in Yojimbo has his tongue planted firmly in check as he pays his respects to the American western (and such noirs as Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest and The Glass Key); the final confrontation could have been taken from My Darling Clementine or The Paleface. But here we have Sanjuro facing down a loaded gun with a samurai sword and imbued with so much confidence he walks into the fray with just a hitch of his shoulder. Most of the time, Kurosawa plays the violence for laughs and a quick reaction shot. But just as Sanjuro can quickly switch from an observer to a human slaughterhouse with his quick sword action, Kurosawa can cut through the black comedy and turn the film into a nightmarish end-of-days conflagration. As the howling wind and dust ramp up, so does the fever pitch of the film.

Underneath the action film hijinks, Kurosawa is making criticisms of the capitalist market mentality and the limitations of individualism. The rival merchants in the town are simply playing out end-of-the-line capitalism to destructive results. If Sanjuro had not walked upon the scene, one faction would have destroyed the other and the town's populace would have been in thrall to the winner of the monopoly (welcome to the corporate world of 2009). But Sanjuro, the unconcerned individualist, comes along and upsets the machinelike inevitability. Instead of righting the balance so that all may live in peace (the theme of Hollywood westerns pre-Yojimbo), Sanjuro's machinations result in total apocalyptic destruction, with most of the town's residents and buildings destroyed in the end.

As Sanjuro walks away from the smoldering ruins, Sanjuro simply says, "See ya around." One wonders what Sanjuro could do for Wall Street. Keep your swords sharpened and your sake warm.

Criterion's reissue of the film bundles it with the sequel Sanjuro, and offers historical commentary tracks, improved soundtrack, and copious documentaries about the making of both films.



A few more paces, please.