Yojimbo

Western with sushi flavour

Yojimbo
The AV Channel. Rated PG.
Reviewer: Lt Simone Heyer

NOT LONG ago, SBS featured a documentary on Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. How timely it was to then see one of his finer productions, Yojimbo.

Kurosawa’s samurai series could be looked at as sushi-westerns with all the quality of an Americanstyle western fi lm, but set in Japan. Actually, the quality is better.

Yojimbo plays an over-confident, man-of-few-words samurai, who saunters into a two-horse town to make a few dollars.

There are two warring groups vying for control of the town and Yojimbo sides with them both to have them destroy each other.

There’s plenty of corny moments as you’d expect, but Yojimbo is a great laugh and a good look at Japanese customs and way of life in feudal times.