Yojimbo
| Year: | 1961 |
| Director: | Akira Kurosawa |
| Writer: | Akira Kurosawa |
Kurosawa owes so much of his success to Steven Spielberg. Like most movies fans, the only reason I wanted to watch a Kurosawa film is because the most famous moviemaker in the world cites him as a favourite (it's the same reason old cult movies are so huge now just because Tarantino has made them cool again).
And while he might have had a huge impact on Spielberg, it's Spielberg, and not Kurosawa, who has passed the legacy of inspiration to me; hence I simply found it ridiculously melodramatic (as was the fashion in moviemaking at the time) and dreadfully slow.
I'd also seen it twice before in two remakes (in Leone's Fistful of Dollars and Hill's Last Man Standing), done better both times. It's just unfortunate that the original was from before my time; it was, the seminal telling of the Man With no Name Story, and deserves the kudos for virtually inventing the idea (and the whole spaghetti western genre).
Yojimbo is the Eastwood of samurai-era Japan, drifting into a small town where factions of gamblers are slowly killing off the population with their gangland warfare. A canny student of human nature as well as a swordsman, Yojimbo plays them off each other to maximum profit and effect for himself.
And while he might have had a huge impact on Spielberg, it's Spielberg, and not Kurosawa, who has passed the legacy of inspiration to me; hence I simply found it ridiculously melodramatic (as was the fashion in moviemaking at the time) and dreadfully slow.
I'd also seen it twice before in two remakes (in Leone's Fistful of Dollars and Hill's Last Man Standing), done better both times. It's just unfortunate that the original was from before my time; it was, the seminal telling of the Man With no Name Story, and deserves the kudos for virtually inventing the idea (and the whole spaghetti western genre).
Yojimbo is the Eastwood of samurai-era Japan, drifting into a small town where factions of gamblers are slowly killing off the population with their gangland warfare. A canny student of human nature as well as a swordsman, Yojimbo plays them off each other to maximum profit and effect for himself.