Sanjuro (1962)

June 27, 2023 11:14 PM

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

posted by mark k (4 comments total)

The Rotten Tomatoes score is at least a bit misleading, since it would imply the movie is better than Yojimbo (95%). Which it's not, even on its own, and it also suffers a bit from being a sequel that rehashes the first movie without doing anything fundamentally new.

But it's still a fun movie with a nice thriller plot full of cat-and-mouse moves and the joy of watching Toshiro Mifune for 90 minutes is considerable. There's a lot of comic incompetence floating around, without undercutting the level of cunning that both Sanjuro and the corrupt officials display.
posted by mark k at 11:24 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Love when Mifune kicks the door shut in the face of the young stupid samurai who are about to charge stupidly into death.

This is the coziest classic samurai movie I can think of.
posted by fleacircus at 2:28 AM on June 28, 2023

The Rotten Tomatoes score is at least a bit misleading...

I agree that Yojimbo is the far better film. But I think Sanjuro is the more rewatchable of the two. If I am in the mood for Mifune's wiley samurai, Sanjuro would be my first choice. Maybe that is why it score's higher.
posted by Stuka at 11:11 AM on June 28, 2023

I agree, this film is more lightweight than Yojimbo. But it's the problem of already knowing our gruff, irascible samurai character, instead of watching his character develop as he reacts. It can be seen as a lampoon of the films of upper crust samurai (albeit ones with no experience or wiles) and the lords and ladies of that world. In Yojimbo, he's the puppet master, setting the dueling gangs against each other; here he's reacting to the idiotic narrow mindedness of these patrician samurai and their beliefs. And he's up against a fanatical swordsman continually trying to drag Sanjuro into the formal samurai duel. The ending is surprisingly sad, with Sanjuro victorious but angry that the young samurai haven't learned a thing. Kurosawa tried to give the individual young samurai some kind of characters, but realized they worked better as a comic unit-- a "trail of goldfish dung!!!" as Sanjuro called them in an outtake. They are as empty-headed and in awe of Sanjuro's "drawn sword" as ever.
When this film was released, western film critics were divided on whether the subtitles helped or were inadequate to convey some of the humor, particularly in the scenes with Sanjuro and the very formal ladies. I'm fine with subtitles and think the critic who insisted it should have been dubbed in English, by comedians, is an ass.
Btw, if you can watch the trailer, do so. It has incredibly funny bouncy music, and several scenes showing Kurosawa directing and rehearsing the cast.
posted by winesong at 2:40 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]