List Price: $39.95You Pay Only: $35.99 You Save: $3.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515020824
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 23, 2007
Running Time: 110 minutes
Sales Rank: 40504
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: September 13, 1961
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars) and Walter Hill (Last Man Standing), this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential and entertaining films ever produced. Criterion is proud to present this Kurosawa favorite in a new, high-definition digital transfer.
Amazon.com essential video:
This semi-comic 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ran) was inspired by the American Western genre. Kurosawa mainstay ToshirĂ´ Mifune (The Seven Samurai) plays a drifting samurai for hire who plays both ends against the middle with two warring factions, surviving on his wits and his ability to outrun his own bad luck. Eventually the samurai seeks to eliminate both sides for his own gain and to define his own sense of honor. Yojimbo is striking for its unorthodox treatment of violence and morality, reserving judgment on the actions of its main character and instead presenting an entertaining tale with humor and much visual excitement. One of the inspirations for the 'spaghetti Westerns' of director Sergio Leone and later surfacing as a remake as Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis, this film offers insight into a director who influenced American films even as he was influenced by them. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Wit and a Sword !!
Kurosawa's YOJIMBO is a classic of the genre, and easily ranks as both my favorite Kurosawa and my favorite samurai flick. This is a must-see film!
I won't delve into the plot, for if you're familiar with "A Fistful of Dollars" (which was inspired by Yojimbo), then you already know the story. Kurosawa masterfully tells the tale of a lone samurai warrior (played by the excellent Toshiro Mifune) who wanders, by chance, into a town with dueling factions and what then befalls all. The black-and-white photography works well, nicely accentuating the town's corruptness.
If you enjoy this movie, then I would strongly recommend that you also see SEVEN SAMURAI (another Kurosawa classic and again starring the incomparable Mifune).
[A quick note regarding this DVD version...a number of other reviewers have reported problems. I haven't had any issues, myself -- the image appears in letterbox form on my standard-format (4:3 aspect ratio) TV. And the image quality, for me, is more than adequate (and MUCH better than when I had first viewed Yojimbo, many many years ago, as a 16 millimeter print that had been cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio).]
Rating: - Japanese Samurai and American Western Send-Up
Yojimbo is Kurosawa's most popular movie both at home and in the West & it is easy to see why. First and foremost, it's just fun. Combining cool, dry wit, black humor and rousing action; even those who don't "get" the mocking of Westerns or Samurai movies will find plenty to enjoy. Shorter than Ran and Seven Samurai, more accessible than Rashomon or Throne of Blood and more exciting than Ikiru or Red Beard. Yojimbo isn't a masterpiece, though Toshiro Mifune gives an incredible performance. Yojimbo has such a relaxed, sardonic tone to it, I don't think Kurosawa was trying for masterpiece.
As nearly always with Kurosawa, there is, just beneath the easy to follow story, a clever subtext. Kurosawa was one of the few directors who was able to entertain casual filmgoers and the more demanding art house crowd. As an old man, he claimed he was just trying to entertain by telling simple stories. I don't know if he was being coy or modest but it just ain't true. Too many of his movies are too intelligent for him not to be consciously striving for something a bit deeper, often a lot deeper.
Here, Kurosawa is lighhtly mocking both the conventions of Samurai and Western movies. He was, as far as I know, the first Japanese director to realize the parallels between Westerns and Samurais. Both often feature a tough but compassionate, resolute, lone honorable fighting man with consummate skill with a gun or a sword in a frontier world of violence and cruelty. Also, both samurai ... Read More
Rating: - Yojimbo - Remastered Edition (Criterion Collection Spine #52)
Terrific fild - I just really like this actor and this production and this story. Great fun!!
Rating: - Great Kurosawa...
A masterful performance by Toshiro Mifune, great dialogue, great direction and cinematography; A MUST SEE film which deserves your time.
Rating: - The Ancestor of the lone cool-hitman stereotype. A masterpiece in samurai films.
Toshiro Mifune made the first most important contemporary portrayal of the mercenary assasin stereotype ruling the collective imagery of all genres concerning action and thrilling crime-ganster films today. The dysfunctional sense of honor and selfishness carried by this lightning sword skilled hitman, mixed with the poetic, artistic and always then-controversial style and aesthetics of the samurai genre product of the talent and incredible filmic values-portrayal of the master filmaker Akira Kurosawa, gave birth to a legendary new improved vision of an anti-hero, a good guy that takes no value on human life, but attached to an incredible and respectful sense of honor and devotion of the code of the warrior.
That fundamental contradiction was the foundation of the "cool" incredibly talented cold hearted mercenary, a sense of justice and rightgeous standards according to a sense of being with a new attitude: boredom, disgust for the oponents and mankind, greed, the selfish guarantee of self protection, but never leaving the unavoidable values code proper of the japanese samurai culture. The flea beaten amoral ronin walks the fields looking for oportunities of "work", slashing unknown oponents with fierce rapid talent for an incredible amount of money, setting a standard about the real values of human life and the economic costs of affording such a collosal protection. A bodyguard like this can't possibly be trusted, only if you deserve to die as well. That twist of the honor values shaked ... Read More
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