SYNOPSIS: Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed Sanjuro. In this sly companion piece to Yojimbo, jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a “proper” samurai on its ear. Less brazen in tone than its predecessor but equally entertaining, this classic character’s return is a masterpiece in its own right.
| Sanjuro | Toshiro Mifune |
| Hanbei Moroto | Tatsuya Nakadai |
| Kimura the Spy | Keiju Kobayashi |
| Iiro Izaka | Yuzo Kayama |
| Chidori | Reiko Dan |
| Kurofuji | Takashi Shimura |
| Takebayashi | Kamatari Fujiwara |
| Mutsuta’s wife | Takako Irie |
| Mutsuta | Yunosuke Ito |
| Kikui | Masao Shimizu |
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Producer | Tomoyuki Tanaka and Ryuzo Kikushima |
| Screenplay | Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni |
| From the novel by | Shugoro Yamamoto |
| Cinematography | Fukuzo Koizumi and Takao Saitô |
| Production design | Yoshiro Muraki |
| Music | Masaru Sato |
By January 22, 2007
In the Kurosawa movie family tree, Sanjuro (1962) is the sassy kid brother to Yojimbo, and like many light-hearted younger siblings, it’s underrated. After Yojimbo achieved blockbuster status in 1961, Kurosawa took Read more »
