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Yojimbo
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A dog and a horse.
Interestingly, Yojimbo, as one of, if not THE, progenitors of the Ronin trope, doesn't actually feed into it very heavily beyond the fact that Sanjuro, our main character, is a capable samurai with no allegiances.
What I DIDN'T expect was that the Yojimbo in FFX is extraordinarily true to the concept presented in this film.
Rather than simply being the lone samurai who gets hired by the good guys to shuffle the bad guys outta town, Sanjuro wanders into town, sees a feudal stalemate between two factions and decides, "I can make money off of this". The majority of the movie has him sidling up to some... Restaurant Owner? who's pretty cynical in the face of his failing business while the coffin maker next door is making a killing. Sanjuro learns about the inner politics of the town and proceeds to manipulate his way into both sides of the conflict, trading information and taking up bodyguard services (because if we don't hire him, the other guys will and we don't want that).
It may seem grimy at first, but it's quickly revealed that the "good guys" are more than grimy themselves, secretly plotting to stab Sanjuro in the back after he's done his job, assuming him to be no less a ruthless mercenary than the gamblers they're fighting against.
Sanjuro puts on a convincing show of being tough and self-absorbed, but he also manages to show he can be a good guy when he goes out of his way to bring a family back together and urging them to run away with his entire commission.
This is perhaps the most irritating part of the movie for me though, because despite Sanjuro expressly impressing upon the family to "run away!", "take my ryo!", and "never come back!" they just stand their thanking him like idiots while Sanjuro's neck is on the line not to get caught.
And sure enough when he finally gets them to bail out of town, they come back and leave damning evidence that he's a traitor, which gets him found out and beaten to a pulp.
That's really frustrating especially since this is never resolved in any sort of lesson or general takeaway. It's just one instance in which Sanjuro stuck his neck out for somebody and the morons in their infinite stupidity ****ed him over for it. That's just a pretty sucky thing to see happen for no apparent narrative reason.
A couple other issues with the movie would be later swordfights which completely invert the typical Blood Geyser problem by not featuring any sound effects, stabbing, or really anything besides slashing motions. It's REALLY easy to fake that and it takes me out of it when it looks like the sort of mock fight I'd see children performing in their backyards.
The story occasionally drifts in horribly dry exposition about tertiary characters we don't know or care about and the soundtrack is also kinda cruddy with some extremely inappropriately upbeat music.
All in all I'd say it's a fine movie. Better than Ikiru, but not as good as Seven Samurai, and I like Yojimbo in FFX more for it.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
REWATCH UPDATE (4/21/25):
It's been a bit since I've seen Yojimbo and despite saying that I preferred Seven Samurai to it, I feel like I remember it most fondly of the Kurosawa films I've seen, so I decided to rewatch it.
The concept of Yojimbo is simple and appealing enough, but there are definitely more things I could have credited the movie with.
For one thing, it's starts off the conflict real quick, it's only about 5 minutes into the movie, including the opening credits, that Sanjuro walks into town and conflict introduces itself. From that point forward the pacing is mostly pretty decent.
I've also developed a bit more of an appreciation for Gonji, the restaurant owner, one of the only neutral characters in the movie and the one which Sanjuro mooches off of while he's in town.
I kind of appreciate that he's this curmudgeonly old doomer who's already just fed up with it all, but still manages to be a good guy by knowingly offering Sanjuro free food and ultimately saving his life and tending to his wounds later in the movie.
He strongly reminds me of a specific employee at my workplace who's appearance and personality mirror him very closely.
I also gotta give credit to the cinematography. Despite being in black and white, there are some really nice shots in this movie. Oftentimes it's just following characters around the set, but there are also some cool moments that try to intermingle the foreground and background, such as when the two factions are footsy-ing up to each other with swords out and we have a low angle of Sanjuro just sitting up in the guard tower watching the entire spectacle.
I said before that the most irritating part of the movie was the family that Sanjuro saves getting him beat up and captured. It obviously sucks from a karmic perspective, because you don't want Sanjuro punished for his one good deed, but on the other hand I could also see the argument that it demonstrates the risk Sanjuro took by trying to do the right thing, which, considering he's spent most of the movie trying to benefit himself, there should be a great deal of weight put on his effort to benefit others.
I've decided, however, that my most disliked aspect of the movie overall is the wealth of characters and the bout of exposition Gonji takes to list them all very early on in the movie. We have...
Seibei, the original gambling kingpin,
Ushitora, who split off from Seibei,
Orin, Seibei's wife,
Yoichiro, Seibei's son,
Inokichi, Ushitora's brother (the dumb one),
Unosuke, Ushitora's other brother (the gun one),
Tazaemon, the silk merchant (the mayor) allied to Seibei,
Tokuemon, the sake brewer (also the mayor?) allied to Ushitora,
and there's half a dozen more side characters besides.
Like, I can't memorize all that shit. I already have difficulty distinguishing Seibei from Ushitora, since they're both similar-looking old guys with the same hairstyle. And much of the information given to us about these characters takes place when they're offscreen.
Like, I'm supposed to understand that some rando **** named Kohei sold his wife Nui to Ushitora to settle his gambling debt, and Ushitora gave Nui to Tokuemon.
If I don't have a firm grasp of all of those names and who they represent, I'm ****ing lost. Who's Ushitora? Is he the guy with the wife and son, or is he the guy with the brothers? Who is Tokuemon, is he the sake brewer or the silk merchant? Is he allied to Ushitora or Seibei? Is he the fake mayor or the real mayor?
If it was visually communicated that Ushitora is the dude with the dumb**** who doesn't know that 4 is greater than 2 and that Tokuemon is the lead actor from Seven Samurai who barely gets any screentime in this movie, I'd be a lot less confused, but that information only really trickles in over the course of the movie, and even now only with repeatedly checking the cast list on Wikipedia.
That is by far my biggest issue. One that will fade with repeat watches, but shouldn't take repeat watches in the first place. This movie has such a simple high concept, but can't help but muddy the plot with offscreen interpersonal politics.
Another thing I'm not a big fan of is the music. The more passive orchestration that adds tension and texture to scenes is fine, but as stated previously, the big bombastic themes just kinda sound shitty to me. It's probably one of the biggest reasons I wish this movie would get a proper remake.
Not a Spaghetti Western remake.
Not a modern day remake.
Not a Star Wars remake.
Not a even Jean-Claude Van Damme remake.
I want this movie done again with actual samurai characters.
I know there are more movies featuring Sanjuro, or are functional retellings of Yojimbo, and I may have to watch those, but come on. I know we're talking about Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune here, but let's see this movie done again IN COLOR, with a better soundtrack, with none of the sound effects missing, maybe a bit more blood, and maybe a bit less exposition. It could be done justice.
This is neither positive or negative, but I don't think Sanjuro even makes much money in this movie. He first accepts an advance of 25 ryo and returns it when he discovers Seibei's plan to backstab him. He later receives an advance of 30 ryo, but then rejects it saying he'll wait for another deal. I think there's one moment where he provides information to Seibei and he just digs some coins out of his purse as payment and I think that's all he makes throughout the whole movie.
It would have been nice if, once he'd received some money he spent some of it on Gonji, who's been providing for him the entire movie. Wouldn't that have been a nice moment?
Anyway, overall, I still like this movie. It may grow on me yet, but for now it's:
Final Verdict: [Good]
Yojimbo
Action Drama / Japanese / 1961
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
For the Action Movie Countdown.
After Sword of the Stranger I decided to check out what may be the most classic iteration of the Ronin story and to my understanding that's Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I wasn't especially compelled to see it until I realized it stars Toshiro Mifune who was the comedy relief in Seven Samurai, probably my favorite character in that movie.
The only familiarity I have with the name Yojimbo is that it's also the name of my favorite summon in Final Fantasy X. Yojimbo's particularly interesting because he has a unique control mechanic in which his moveset is entirely locked off to you and the degree to which he'll help you is based on a complex system of bribing him to improve his hidden Loyalty stat. He's the only summon in the game who explicitly requires payment to perform any of his moves, but the trade-off is that he's actually capable of INSTANTLY KILLING BOSSES.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
After Sword of the Stranger I decided to check out what may be the most classic iteration of the Ronin story and to my understanding that's Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I wasn't especially compelled to see it until I realized it stars Toshiro Mifune who was the comedy relief in Seven Samurai, probably my favorite character in that movie.
The only familiarity I have with the name Yojimbo is that it's also the name of my favorite summon in Final Fantasy X. Yojimbo's particularly interesting because he has a unique control mechanic in which his moveset is entirely locked off to you and the degree to which he'll help you is based on a complex system of bribing him to improve his hidden Loyalty stat. He's the only summon in the game who explicitly requires payment to perform any of his moves, but the trade-off is that he's actually capable of INSTANTLY KILLING BOSSES.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"I'll get paid for killing, and this town is full of people who deserve to die."
A dog and a horse.
Interestingly, Yojimbo, as one of, if not THE, progenitors of the Ronin trope, doesn't actually feed into it very heavily beyond the fact that Sanjuro, our main character, is a capable samurai with no allegiances.
What I DIDN'T expect was that the Yojimbo in FFX is extraordinarily true to the concept presented in this film.
Rather than simply being the lone samurai who gets hired by the good guys to shuffle the bad guys outta town, Sanjuro wanders into town, sees a feudal stalemate between two factions and decides, "I can make money off of this". The majority of the movie has him sidling up to some... Restaurant Owner? who's pretty cynical in the face of his failing business while the coffin maker next door is making a killing. Sanjuro learns about the inner politics of the town and proceeds to manipulate his way into both sides of the conflict, trading information and taking up bodyguard services (because if we don't hire him, the other guys will and we don't want that).
It may seem grimy at first, but it's quickly revealed that the "good guys" are more than grimy themselves, secretly plotting to stab Sanjuro in the back after he's done his job, assuming him to be no less a ruthless mercenary than the gamblers they're fighting against.
Sanjuro puts on a convincing show of being tough and self-absorbed, but he also manages to show he can be a good guy when he goes out of his way to bring a family back together and urging them to run away with his entire commission.
This is perhaps the most irritating part of the movie for me though, because despite Sanjuro expressly impressing upon the family to "run away!", "take my ryo!", and "never come back!" they just stand their thanking him like idiots while Sanjuro's neck is on the line not to get caught.
And sure enough when he finally gets them to bail out of town, they come back and leave damning evidence that he's a traitor, which gets him found out and beaten to a pulp.
That's really frustrating especially since this is never resolved in any sort of lesson or general takeaway. It's just one instance in which Sanjuro stuck his neck out for somebody and the morons in their infinite stupidity ****ed him over for it. That's just a pretty sucky thing to see happen for no apparent narrative reason.
A couple other issues with the movie would be later swordfights which completely invert the typical Blood Geyser problem by not featuring any sound effects, stabbing, or really anything besides slashing motions. It's REALLY easy to fake that and it takes me out of it when it looks like the sort of mock fight I'd see children performing in their backyards.
The story occasionally drifts in horribly dry exposition about tertiary characters we don't know or care about and the soundtrack is also kinda cruddy with some extremely inappropriately upbeat music.
All in all I'd say it's a fine movie. Better than Ikiru, but not as good as Seven Samurai, and I like Yojimbo in FFX more for it.
REWATCH UPDATE (4/21/25):
It's been a bit since I've seen Yojimbo and despite saying that I preferred Seven Samurai to it, I feel like I remember it most fondly of the Kurosawa films I've seen, so I decided to rewatch it.
The concept of Yojimbo is simple and appealing enough, but there are definitely more things I could have credited the movie with.
For one thing, it's starts off the conflict real quick, it's only about 5 minutes into the movie, including the opening credits, that Sanjuro walks into town and conflict introduces itself. From that point forward the pacing is mostly pretty decent.
I've also developed a bit more of an appreciation for Gonji, the restaurant owner, one of the only neutral characters in the movie and the one which Sanjuro mooches off of while he's in town.
I kind of appreciate that he's this curmudgeonly old doomer who's already just fed up with it all, but still manages to be a good guy by knowingly offering Sanjuro free food and ultimately saving his life and tending to his wounds later in the movie.
He strongly reminds me of a specific employee at my workplace who's appearance and personality mirror him very closely.
I also gotta give credit to the cinematography. Despite being in black and white, there are some really nice shots in this movie. Oftentimes it's just following characters around the set, but there are also some cool moments that try to intermingle the foreground and background, such as when the two factions are footsy-ing up to each other with swords out and we have a low angle of Sanjuro just sitting up in the guard tower watching the entire spectacle.
I said before that the most irritating part of the movie was the family that Sanjuro saves getting him beat up and captured. It obviously sucks from a karmic perspective, because you don't want Sanjuro punished for his one good deed, but on the other hand I could also see the argument that it demonstrates the risk Sanjuro took by trying to do the right thing, which, considering he's spent most of the movie trying to benefit himself, there should be a great deal of weight put on his effort to benefit others.
I've decided, however, that my most disliked aspect of the movie overall is the wealth of characters and the bout of exposition Gonji takes to list them all very early on in the movie. We have...
Seibei, the original gambling kingpin,
Ushitora, who split off from Seibei,
Orin, Seibei's wife,
Yoichiro, Seibei's son,
Inokichi, Ushitora's brother (the dumb one),
Unosuke, Ushitora's other brother (the gun one),
Tazaemon, the silk merchant (the mayor) allied to Seibei,
Tokuemon, the sake brewer (also the mayor?) allied to Ushitora,
and there's half a dozen more side characters besides.
Like, I can't memorize all that shit. I already have difficulty distinguishing Seibei from Ushitora, since they're both similar-looking old guys with the same hairstyle. And much of the information given to us about these characters takes place when they're offscreen.
Like, I'm supposed to understand that some rando **** named Kohei sold his wife Nui to Ushitora to settle his gambling debt, and Ushitora gave Nui to Tokuemon.
If I don't have a firm grasp of all of those names and who they represent, I'm ****ing lost. Who's Ushitora? Is he the guy with the wife and son, or is he the guy with the brothers? Who is Tokuemon, is he the sake brewer or the silk merchant? Is he allied to Ushitora or Seibei? Is he the fake mayor or the real mayor?
If it was visually communicated that Ushitora is the dude with the dumb**** who doesn't know that 4 is greater than 2 and that Tokuemon is the lead actor from Seven Samurai who barely gets any screentime in this movie, I'd be a lot less confused, but that information only really trickles in over the course of the movie, and even now only with repeatedly checking the cast list on Wikipedia.
That is by far my biggest issue. One that will fade with repeat watches, but shouldn't take repeat watches in the first place. This movie has such a simple high concept, but can't help but muddy the plot with offscreen interpersonal politics.
Another thing I'm not a big fan of is the music. The more passive orchestration that adds tension and texture to scenes is fine, but as stated previously, the big bombastic themes just kinda sound shitty to me. It's probably one of the biggest reasons I wish this movie would get a proper remake.
Not a Spaghetti Western remake.
Not a modern day remake.
Not a Star Wars remake.
Not a even Jean-Claude Van Damme remake.
I want this movie done again with actual samurai characters.
I know there are more movies featuring Sanjuro, or are functional retellings of Yojimbo, and I may have to watch those, but come on. I know we're talking about Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune here, but let's see this movie done again IN COLOR, with a better soundtrack, with none of the sound effects missing, maybe a bit more blood, and maybe a bit less exposition. It could be done justice.
This is neither positive or negative, but I don't think Sanjuro even makes much money in this movie. He first accepts an advance of 25 ryo and returns it when he discovers Seibei's plan to backstab him. He later receives an advance of 30 ryo, but then rejects it saying he'll wait for another deal. I think there's one moment where he provides information to Seibei and he just digs some coins out of his purse as payment and I think that's all he makes throughout the whole movie.
It would have been nice if, once he'd received some money he spent some of it on Gonji, who's been providing for him the entire movie. Wouldn't that have been a nice moment?
Anyway, overall, I still like this movie. It may grow on me yet, but for now it's:
Final Verdict: [Good]