Review: _Yojimbo:_ My favourite Akira Kurosawa movie.

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I have really started to get into Asian films over the last decade or so. Before, I had watched such classics as _The Seven Samurai,_ and enjoyed them immensely. One of my favourite directors has always been Akira Kurosawa, the director most familiar to American audiences, and happily, more of his work is becoming available to viewers. _Yojimbo_ is set in a little town in the back end of nowhere. The opening shots show a ronin -- a masterless samurai -- in scruffy clothing, and looking none too clean. The road is as dusty as he is, and the town clearly appears to be in desperate straits. Two gangs of ruffians have taken over the town. For the samurai (Toshiro Mifune), it's all sorts of possibilities. One gang is owned by a brothel owner, Seibê (Seizaburo Kawazu), who runs his business with ruthless efficiency, but he's overturned more often than not by his witchy wife (Yoko Tsukasa). The other gang is run by Tokuemon (Takashi Shimura), a silk dealer who processes most of the product that the town produces. Between them, the two gangs have run the town into oblivion. The samurai takes shelter with the local inn owner, Gonji (Erjiro Tono), who over the meal of rice, lays out what is what in the town. Gonji tells him to go on and leave town, that it's not worth the bother of staying. But the samurai is taking a long game here, and then he proceeds to show the town where the future lays... What can I say? I -love- this film. The comedy in it is a bit twisted, and definitely tongue in cheek. The best scene is when the samurai climbs a pole and watches as the two gang typically shows just how tough they are -- it's a comic scene, where the gangs are like two dogs sizing each other up, and not sure who's going to attack first. Secondary characters also excel, such as the town's coffin builder -- he's doing great business, by the way -- and the town's constable, who's too timid to actually stop any evil doing. The most poignant scene is when the samurai rescues a young family, and you get to see what sort of person he really is. Finally, there's a brash young fighter who has a secret weapon -- a revolver -- as the picture of the relentless future that the samurai can not stand against. In black and white, in Japanese with English subtitles. I was able to find this on Hulu Plus, but sometimes it appears in the rotation on Netflix. It's worth every minute and one that I recommend highly. Kurosawa both wrote and directed the film and did a great job with it. It was made in 1961 and still is relevant in today's world. If this film seems a bit familiar, this was remade in 1964 as _A Fistful of Dollars,_ the second of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. Comparing the two, I like them both. Five stars overall and well worth the trouble to find.