Customer Ratings & Reviews

This was bought as a Christmas present for a relative who was into Samurai movies. She adores them and says she highly recommends the purchase for anyone with similar tastes.

No movie collection would be complete without these classics from Akira Kurosawa! Yojimbo & Sanjuro are easily 2 of the top 100 films of all time! Beautifully packaged and we'll worth the price!

Akira Kurosawa is best known in the US for his samurai eipcs, and these are two of his best. 'Yojimbo' and 'Sanjuro' are part of the 'Chanbara' genre, and such films focus on action (the word 'Chanbara' is based on the sound of clashing swords). Both movies are played for humor rather than for drama. These two films follow a drifter played by the legendary Toshiro Mifune. We never learn anything about his past and he identifies himself as 'Sanjuro' (probably not his real name). In 'Yojimbo' (which means Bodyguard), he comes upon a small village plagued by to rival crime bosses. Sanjuro engineers various situations to bring the conflict to a head in an effort to get them to destroy one another. In 'Sanjuro', the sequel to 'Yojimbo', Sanjuro helps a group of samurai rescue thier kidnapped lord. Both films feature exciting sword duels with Sanjuro against a large number of sword swinging enemies. The duels are all deftly executed featuring brilliant directing and fight choreography. All of the action scenes show Kurosawa's amaing skill with the camera. In addition to the exciting action scenes, there is a lot humor in both movies, ranging from dark humor to scenes of incompetent criminal henchmen and none too bright samurai. Sanjuro himself is brilliantly portrayed by the great Toshiro Mifune, possibly one of the finest actors who ever lived. Mifune's screen presence is both electrifing and captivating. The extras in both movies give some keen insights into the making of both films. 'Sanjuro' features a segment on how the sound effects were created and both sets of DVD extras have inerviews with cast and crew members and other Kurosawa contemporaries. There are a few problems with the source material in a few places, but these problems are not persistent. The restoration process on both films was very well done, and the picture and sound is clear throughout all of both movies. But there are a couple scenes where the condition of the source material is apparent. This will not affect your enjoyment of either movie. These problems are just in a few isolated segments and not throughout. I recommend this for fans of Kurosawa or of Japanese cinema in general as well as for fans of action movies.