Word: sanjuro
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro might disappoint you if you are expecting a movie on the order of his Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, or even perhaps Yojimbo...
...Sanjuro lacks the organic character of Kurosawa's best movies. The violence and the comedy are disproportionate to the story, and are never quite integrated in it. This is not to say that Sanjuro is a bad movie. It isn't. But it belongs to a lighter level of entertainment than Rashomon or Seven Samurai. The story-line itself has no less potential that that of Seven Samurai; but here Kurosawa has chosen to keep it exaggerated and farcical rather than to develop it in depth...
Sheer exaggeration provides both the humor and the violence of Sanjuro. You see nine-men-plus-Mifune against a body of God-knows-how-many evil men. Mifune's swordplay in the slaughter scenes is so fake it's scarcely worth suspending your disbelief. Yet you don't think about that when he's slicing through whole screensful of villains. Unfortunately exaggeration is lacking where it most belongs, in the character of "Sanjuro," played by Mifune. He is good chiefly at two things: swaggering around scratching his neck, and jumping up and down hurling insults at his antagonists. Kurosawa doesn...
...Sanjuro, no such rapport develops. As a result of Kurosawa's more superficial treatment of his story, Mifune's exertions remain extraneous, and no real moral conflict is ever engaged...
...these objections will not keep you away from Sanjuro, if you are a Kurosawa fan. (If you aren't a Kurosawa fan, it's probably because you haven't seen any of his movies yet. If Sanjuro is your first, these objections can remind you that even better Kurosawa films exist.) Like all of Kurosawa's movies, Sanjuro is worth seeing and re-seeing...