Far removed from the clownish and undisciplined warrior-for-hire Toshiro Mifune played in Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai is the cunning and dazzlingly opportunistic master swordsman he portrayed a few years later in Yojimbo and Sanjuro (both also directed by Kurosawa). He is a samurai without a master, a loner without a name, a wanderer without a home. In these two adventures, he takes the nom de guerre Sanjuro as he rids one town of warring criminal gangs (Yojimbo, remade a few years later as A Fistful of Dollars) and helps some honest young men battle a corrupt local official (Sanjuro). It’s a rough and brutal world—as he enters one village, a dog walks past with a severed hand in its mouth—but actor and filmmaker add a sharp comic touch to all the intrigue and bloodshed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG-bIljVFLw]