Sanjuro

With a near clean lineup of masterpieces under his belt, nobody could fault Kurosawa for wanting to make a simple piece of entertainment. This simple aspiration did not stop him from making another hugely influential success.

Sanjuro is a loose sequel to the classic Yojimbo. The character is back, as is, confusingly, Tatsuya Nakadai as a completely different character. The landscape and tone are entirely new, lighter, jollier. It is almost a spoof of its predecessor,as Mifune's nonchalant and perpetually unwashed antihero helps a group of goody- two-shoes samurai save their framed master. This is also the first on-screen collaboration between Toshiro Mifune and the young Yuzo Kayama, before they costared to such memorable effect on Redbeard.

Nobody spoofs Kurosawa better than the man himself: this is without a doubt his funniest film, yet he never treats it as a second-class product. No slouch, the director peppers this light romp with unforgettable visual flourishes, enraptured homages to the American Westerns that so inspired him, and an end-note of surprising violence, the likes of which Tarantino could only dream of.

At a fast-paced 96 minutes, this is probably a great entry point into the cinema of Akira Kurosawa, and a film that would be much more highly regarded had it not come from such an established filmmaker.

This is the sequel to 'Yojimbo'. Toshirô Mifune returns as the wandering ronin Sanjûrô Tsubaki. He encounters nine naive samurai who wants to confront corruption. One of the samurai had confronted his uncle the lord with the accusations. The response was dissatisfying so he tells the superintendent. The superintendent tells the nephew to gather his men. The ronin immediately smells a trap, and the corrupt superintendent launches a raid on the group. Only the ronin's smarts saves the group. Now the uncle and his family are taken prisoner and the ronin endeavors to rescue them with the help of the nine naive samurai. Only the clueless nine are sometimes more problematic with their distrust of the often napping ronin.

This is a funnier movie than Yojimbo. Sanjuro does battle more with his brains than with his sword. The best swords are kept in their sheaths. However there is that great scene of drawing of the swords at the end. The guy imprisoned in the closet has a good funny scene. It's a very good sequel to Yojimbo with a funnier tone.

In Japan circa Eighteenth Century, nine young men decide to present an accusation of corruption in their clan to the local superintendent. However, the group is betrayed, but the ronin Sanjûrô Tsubaki (Toshirô Mifune) saves them from the superintendent's men. The uncle of the leader of the rebel clansmen, the Chamberlain Mutsuta (Yûnosuke Itô), is kidnapped, and his wife and daughter are detained and made prisoner of the superintendent, and he tries to force Mutsuta to write a fake confession letter declaring being corrupt. Sanjûrô helps the group to rescue the Chamberlain and his family.

"Sanjûrô" is a funny adventure of master Akira Kurosawa. The story has great action scenes and jokes, excellent cinematography and performances, I like it but it is not among my favorite movies of Kurosawa. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Sanjuro"

An excellent sequel to Yojimbo.

I can't quite decide which one is better. I think I enjoyed this one just a tiny bit more.

Toshiro Mifune really is one of he most badass actors of all time

Tsubaki Sanjuro is, unfortunately, not so widely seen abroad (= outside Japan) as Yojinbo, probably because it was not copied as a western. In Japan, however, Tsubaki Sanjuro is not less popular than Yojinbo. Not a few Japanese actually prefer the former to the latter, and it's easy to see why: It is stylistically more polished and smarter than Yojimbo and Mifune is 'cooler' as well - he shows a brilliant leadership and every Mifune fan would be really delighted to see how his young, naive disciples run after him like chicks following the mother duck.

And while Yojinbo's female main character, Orin, is an evil and crafty woman, Lady Mutsuta in Tsubaki Sanjuro is 'irritatingly light-hearted'. But she has a deep insight into Sanjuro's personality and understands him far better than his male disciples. An excellent character, and, in fact, she is the only person in Tsubaki Sanjuro AND Yojinbo to whom Sanjuro/Mifune speaks in a polite form (in Japanese).

Tsubaki Sanjuro is, so to speak, a 'concentrate' of Kurosawa's cinematography and one sees in it every aspect of his greatness in a very compact form. Therefore no one could remake this movie.