Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa (2025)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Samurai Floored

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune team up for one of their most enjoyable, and most seemingly simple samurai films. The clever Sanjuro (Mifune) arrives in a small town and proceeds to play one rival faction against the other. The film has an underlying darkness and cynicism, with a running commentary on loyalty and commerce, and the idea that this town will be better off with all the corrupt villains dead. One of the startling and memorable images from the first few minutes is a dog happily toddling along with a human hand in its mouth. It's slyly composed and shot, making masterful use of the black-and-white widescreen frame, and it's one of the team's very best films.

Perhaps the most successful film of Kurosawa's career, Yojimbo was said to have been inspired by Dashiell Hammett stories. It was nominated for an Oscar for Costume Design. Sanjuro returned in a sequel, Sanjuro, the following year. And Sergio Leone famously remade Yojimbo as the Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood. In the 1990s, Walter Hill did another remake, Last Man Standing, starring Bruce Willis, and gave Kurosawa story credit.

Next, Akira Kurosawa had intended to make an adaptation of a novel by Shûgorô Yamamoto, but when Yojimbo became a huge success, it was decided to turn the film into a sequel, using the character of Sanjuro. As a result, Sanjuro is tonally quite different from its predecessor, funnier and less dense, but still a fantastic companion piece. (It tends to be underrated by comparison.) In it, Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune) stumbles upon a group of nine young, naive samurai who are just discovering corruption among their leaders, and decides to help them. The more straightforward story gives Mifune more room to play around and have fun, and it's one of his coolest performances. ("Aren't you tired of being stupid yet?" he barks at the young innocents.) Even so, it has an unforgettable ending, shocking and disquieting.

In 2025, the Criterion Collection released a four-disc set, with both films on 4K and Blu-ray. (Their Blu-ray-only set was released back in 2010.) The black-and-white transfers are glorious. Each film has two audio options, the original monaural track (uncompressed) and "optional DTS-HD Master Audio Perspecta 3.0 soundtracks, preserving the original simulated stereo effects." Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince provides commentary tracks for both films. Other bonuses include episodes of the Toho Masterworks series "Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create," dedicated to each film, plus trailers and stills galleries. Two liner notes booklets include essays by Alexander Sesonske (on Yojimbo) and Michael Sragow (on Sanjuro), as well as comments by Kurosawa and his collaborators. Highly Recommended.