Sanjuro [1962] [DVD]

There were certainly moments of grim humor in "Yojimbo" (such as when Mifune kills two samurai and cuts the arm off of a third and tells the Cooper "Two coffins...No, maybe three"). But in "Sanjûrô" Kurosawa has fun with just about everyone and everything from the start. Mifune's samurai is highly skilled but relentleslly crude, even when he is forced to deal with genteel ladies. His sleep at a shrine is interrupted by nine young samurai who are trying to rescue the uncle of their leader, who has been taken by a corrupt official. These young samurai are hopelessly idealistic and totally naive (they mistakenly think they know who the corrupt official is because he is the one who is not good looking). Sanjûrô decides to help them, not just because their cause is right, but because these kids are going to get slaughtered if he lets them run off to save the day.

Sanjûrô keeps heaping scorn and contempt on the young samurai who show a collective inability to do the right thing and usually to make things worse. It does not help that Sanjûrô rarely explains his plans to his young allies, which makes it easier for these kids to interfere with his plan. Meanwhile, our hero makes an impression on Muroto (Tasuya Nakadai, in a role similar to what he played in "Yojimbo"), the chief samurai of the corrupt officials, which allows him to do a little inside work to help move things along in the desired direction. You would think that Muroto would catch on that the young samurai are not good enough to keep defeating our hero and tying him up, but that just serves to reinforce the idea that Kurosawa is playing this one for laughs.

That being said, in the end "Sanjûrô" is memorable because of the final scene, which offs a shocking and bloody contrast with the rest of the film with one of the most unforgettable duels in all of samurai films. Talk about putting an exclamation point at the end of a film. Kurosawa might have been having fun with his characters and the genre, but in the end he certainly reminds us he is a master.

There are those who argue that it does not matter which in which order you see these two films and since I first came across them in the wrong order I can honestly say that I sort of prefer seeing them backwards simply on the basis of the way Mifune's character arcs from one film to the next. But in terms of going from the known to the unknown, watching this classic 1962 film after "Yojimbo" would be the way to go. Seeing both of them, along with Kurosawa's other masterworks, is what is ultimately important.

After a number of mistakes made by the foolish chamberlain's supporters ( A man involved in politics, who was going to rid the system of the corrupt leaders, but proved to be too ugly to gain favour, and so was kidnapped) to find and rescue him, it ends up taking the simplest of minds to prove the most tactile and reasonable, and the from experience, the Samurai can offer victory. A very engaging, well polished and entertaining watch, worthy of any DVD collection, and of course it would be, its Akira Kurosawa!