Customer Ratings & Reviews

The two greatest samurai movies to come out of the sixties in Blue-Ray format and packaged by Criterion. These are the films that inspired the Sergio Leone westerns that launched Clint Eastwood's movie career - but Toshiro Mifune's unshaven, lice-scratching, limb-lopping mercenary makes Eastwood's "Man with No Name" look like a limp frat boy in comparison. Beautifully restored with lots of extras.

Mr. Kurosawa is by far one of our best film makers. This collection is a must own for any fan of Samurai Cinema. The films aren't that long but are just so intriguing in technique that some of the top film makers to this day infuse into their creations.

This is a great movie with good character development and superb story. Great collection.

If you are a fan of his work this is a beautiful presentation of two of the best ever made. Yojimbo was the basis for A Fistful of Dollars and Sanjuro is one of my all time favorite samurai films.

This is a great collection! Highly recommended if you’re even thinking about it!

This Criterion release is excellent. Scorsese is the best.

Here are two of the best action movies ever made in stunning High Defenition. Yojimbo (which means 'bodyguard' in English) and Sanjuro follow the exploits of a ronin ('masterless samurai') in fuedal Japan who identifies himself as 'Sanjuro' (probably not his real name). In 'Yojimbo', Sanjuro wanders in to a village besieged by two rival crime bosses. In this movie, he engineers various situations to bring the conflict between the two bosses to a head. In 'Sanjuro', he helps a group of incompetent samurai free their lord from a rival. Both movies feature lots of action and lots of comedy. Kurosawa does his usual masterful job directing the sword duels and Toshiro Mifune is awsome as the mysterious Sanjuro. The antics of the thugs in 'Yojimbo' and the misdaventures of the incompetent samurai in 'Sanjuro' are always hilarious to watch. The Blu-Ray transfer is outstanding. Everything is clear, highly detail and sharply defined. Therer are some missing frames in one or two isolated scenes in 'Yojimbo', but that is a source material problem. Both films look stunning and clear. The blacks are black and the whites are white. The extras for both films give insights on the production of both films as well as trailers for both. There's even some input from surviving cast members, including an actor who is lousy in love scenes but great in eating scenes. These movies are good examples of Chanbara, this is the name for a genre of samurai action films (the name comes from the sound of swords clashing). What could easily be run of the mill movies are instead masterpieces thanks to the efforts of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. I recommend these movies to anyone who likes action movies or is curious about Japanese movies.

I like Yojimbo more than Sanjuro due to the story, but they're both great films.