I recently signed up for HBOMax, getting the discounted deal for a whole year paid up front. Yes, this was in part due to the release of the new Game of Thrones show, House of the Dragon (something I didn't think I wanted), but that wasn't the only reason. There is so much good stuff on that service. I thought I knew that beforehand, thinking of all the shows made directly by HBO, and yet was still surprised by the movies when scrolling through the options.
It's been a long term goal to complete off the entire IMDB 250, a list determined by users of the site (as opposed to solely critics or whatever) and that's a pretty challenging task. For one the list is constantly changing, with new movies entering and others moving up and down over time. More than anything it's just a lot of highly-rated movies, with a huge percentage being older and foreign-made. Simply finding a way to watch these is the tough part. Almost none are on Netflix and few are on Prime, especially without paying a rental fee. There are other options available for real cinephiles, like the Criterion Channel, but I haven't signed up for that. Right now I'm very happy with what's on HBOMax, that's what I'm trying to say.
A big subset of the films I have yet to check off are Japanese, and it sure appears that HBOMax has all of them. There's some sort of pairing with TCM to curate these and a bunch of other old stuff and I love it. One Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, made quite a few movies in IMDB's list and was vastly influential on Hollywood and elsewhere. Today I primarily want to talk about one of these, called Yojimbo.
Yojimbo is currently #144 in the Top 250. It came out in 1961, is in black-and-white and spoken entirely in Japanese, with automatic English subtitles on HBOMax. Besides being directed by Kurosawa, Yojimbo stars his frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune, one of the most famous Japanese actors of all time, and perhaps number one.
Mifune plays a drifter, a masterless samurai (or ronin), who, by chance, stumbles into what seems like an abandoned town. He quickly learns, instead, that everyone is locked up tight while two camps fight violently for primacy. A couple of neutrals give Mifune's character the lay of the land, explaining how they arrived to this point, with dueling 'mayors,' more accurately bosses of gambling houses, who use their families, people indebted to them and hired local criminals to wage war on each other. The ronin, who I'm not sure is ever named, spurns an urging to flee, deciding that this is an opportunity. There's money to be made and both sides in this conflict deserve to die.
To demonstrate his ability he picks a fight with one of the groups, singlehandedly taking on a dozen or so men in a sword fight and killing three of them easily. This movie goes hard. When the other faction then attempts to hire him, he holds out for ever more money and is able to remain uncommitted. Slowly he's contributes in escalating their conflict and both sides demonstrate some real evil and ruthlessness. While at first our protagonist seems a greedy mercenary, he's eventually seen to be a real hero who wants to free the town. Just don't grovel and show weakness in thanking him.
It's really an amazing film that's cleverly inventive and surprises at several points. Plus much of the film has been mimicked ever since. If the plot sounds familiar you've probably seen the remake (there have been several but I'm thinking of one in particular). I'm talking, of course, of A Fistful of Dollars (1964). It was the first film in the Dollars Trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood as the 'Man with No Name' and made by Italian director Sergio Leone. I hesitate to call it an American remake because it was one of the 'spaghetti westerns,' filmed in Europe (Italy/Spain) with most of the cast speaking something other than English. For the American release, a few years later, basically everyone but Eastwood was dubbed. Still, unlike Yojimbo, Dollars got a wide release in the United States.
There are a ton of similarities between these movies, obviously. A guy wanders into town and takes advantage of a bad situation, going back and forth between the two sides to achieve his own ends. Dollars even copies the coffin-maker character from Yojimbo, who's the only person in town happy when bodies keep dropping. There are also differences besides language, setting and weapons of choice. Mifune's ronin is, eventually, shown to care little about money. Eastwood's drifter rakes in a ton. There's some slight humor in the Japanese original. There's a lot more, provided primarily by Eastwood, in the spaghetti remake. Overall Yojimbo is probably more realistic and certainly more serious. Dollars, on the other hand, has Leone's style with its absurd (but very fun) gunfights that made it a hit and propelled the ultra-cool Eastwood to stardom.
Both movies are worth watching, though I wouldn't blame someone who wants to stick to the one in color and an American star speaking English. But it's good to know where the concept came from. It kinda blows me away how much Kurosawa has been adapted or remade in Hollywood, and how well these Japanese stories translated to the Old West. Yojimbo is only one example. Another is Seven Samurai (1954) becoming The Magnificent Seven (1960). For something more recent it's very apparent the impact Rashomon (1950) had on The Last Duel (2021), though it wasn't a direct remake, utilizing several changing accounts of the same ordeal ordered to deliver maximum effect.
To sum up, I greatly enjoyed finally seeing Yojimbo. It'd been something I wanted to see for a while. And I can hardly wait to check out more Japanese movies on HBOMax.
Until next time.
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