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Sanjuro (1962)

Round two of Kurosawa vs. Hammer concludes with me watching Sanjuro (the sequel to the first film I watched entitled Yojimbo) and Univarn watching my pick The Curse of Frankenstein.  First I'll remind you I found Yojimbo rather slow plodding and at times tiresome to keep up, so I must admit I was putting off watching this sequel to the very last minute.  Thankfully, Sanjuro turned out to be a little more entertaining than I was expecting, but still very slow.

Toshirô Mifune, is back as the famed Samurai, not too long ago is he was outwitting two waring sides for his own personal gain, now he seems to have found his soft spot and has decided to assist a group of dimwitted clansman save their own necks and the life of the local Chamberlain, who also happens to be the uncle of one of the young men.  The Samurai does what he does best, outwits the opposition by posing as one of their allies then slowly taking them down from the inside.  But this time he has to deal with the poorly thought out bravery of a bunch of idiots who would have themselves killed ten times over if it wasn't for his help!

Sanjuro definitely capitalizes on aspects that Yojimbo seemed to be sorely lacking.  There's a lot more action and comedy in this film which made the slow plodding story and required reading of subtitles much easier to sit through.  Still I found the action sequences a little too over embellished as The Samurai easily takes down a crowd of soldiers who so conveniently attack him one at a time!  And the film's final sequence and last standoff battle was so hilariously awful when The Samurai kills his enemy and about three gallons of blood shoots out from his impaled body; I'm am watching a "classic" right, not a B-movie?!?  But on the plus side the comedy aspect of the film was much more prevalent and welcome.  I especially liked the scene where the guard, the group takes prisoner, is simply forced to sit in an unlocked closet, where he listens to everything going on and every once in a while comes out to throw his two cents into the discussion.  Also the scene where The Samurai is captured and outwits his captors by tricking them into signaling the clansman to attack, was very humorous as well!

But even though there were some enjoyable aspects to the film the brief 96 minute run-time seemed to take forever.  I really can't account for the reason I felt this way other than the story is rather simple and the pace of the film is rather slow.   Once again being forced to read subtitles in a rather slow moving film seems to make the film appear longer than it really is.  Overall, I really enjoyed the last half hour of the film when the story finally starting rolling along, the first hour seems to take up a lot of time progressing absolutely nowhere.  Would I watch it again... possibly, which is definitely more than I can say for the first film.

6/10


1 comment:

  1. I'm glad this one worked better for you. I figured it's shorter runtime would counter many of the issues you had with Yojimbo, and since you found Yojimbo boring I couldn't go with my alternative: Stray Dog which is a bit more slow paced.

    It's interesting to see how we can look at the same thing and come out of it so differently you finding it a bit boring, me finding it among the most captivating films in Kurosawa's filmography.

    One thing I will say I gave both of these about 8's on my first viewing. Though as I've watched them more and more over the years I've absolutely grown to love them and give them the 10's they now possess.

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