Christopher SoallYojimbo
June 1st 2009 23:11
Who hasn't seen it? A severed alien arm against the ground. Star Wars, Mos Eisley, right? You'll find a very similar shot in Yojimbo, a Kurosawa action/dark comedy film that has inspired Western film makers for decades. Sometimes inspired them a little too well. A Fistful of Dollars is, if you ask many, practically an unacknowledged remake of this film.
So what's it about, now? Yojimbo means, approximately, 'bodyguard' in Japanese. So once upon a time, a long time ago, a masterless samurai walks into a town at war, occupied by two fighting gangs and their sycophants and allies. Both factions want this samurai on their team, so to speak, but he has cleverer and more dangerous ideas in mind than simply throwing his loyalty to one or the other.
As with other Kurosawa films, the violence is far from constant, but when it occurs, it's swift and shocking and the very fact that such techniques as slow-mo and close ups are avoided make the battles seem more realistic and frantic. Humor is laced liberally throughout the narrative, which is complex and political and may take a second watch to fully grasp. Characters have consistently funny lines, some (mild by today's standards) gore is played up for laughs, and the story has more to do with strategy and trickery than hack and slash, which only bolsters the dark comedy aspects of the film. Like Seven Samurai, this movie transitions so easily to the Western genre (almost too easily, counting the Fistful of Dollars controversy) that one wonders if Kurosawa was either influenced by the genre or was perhaps lightly satirizing it in this case. Regardless, a fun movie with terrific (and often copied) shots.
So what's it about, now? Yojimbo means, approximately, 'bodyguard' in Japanese. So once upon a time, a long time ago, a masterless samurai walks into a town at war, occupied by two fighting gangs and their sycophants and allies. Both factions want this samurai on their team, so to speak, but he has cleverer and more dangerous ideas in mind than simply throwing his loyalty to one or the other.
As with other Kurosawa films, the violence is far from constant, but when it occurs, it's swift and shocking and the very fact that such techniques as slow-mo and close ups are avoided make the battles seem more realistic and frantic. Humor is laced liberally throughout the narrative, which is complex and political and may take a second watch to fully grasp. Characters have consistently funny lines, some (mild by today's standards) gore is played up for laughs, and the story has more to do with strategy and trickery than hack and slash, which only bolsters the dark comedy aspects of the film. Like Seven Samurai, this movie transitions so easily to the Western genre (almost too easily, counting the Fistful of Dollars controversy) that one wonders if Kurosawa was either influenced by the genre or was perhaps lightly satirizing it in this case. Regardless, a fun movie with terrific (and often copied) shots.
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