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FIRST IMPRESSIONS
A wandering ronin comes across a town torn apart by two criminal gangs, and decides to end the town's trouble by playing them both against each other.
Now, I'll be tackling this movie in perhaps a very different way. I saw A Fistful of Dollars (the spaghetti western remake) first, so I couldn't help comparing the two as I was watching it.
In terms of story, A Fistful of Dollars follows Yojimbo almost beat for beat. The key difference is the attitude of each movie. Fistful of Dollars plays it with much more humanity: you sympathise more with the law-abiding Baxter family. But in Yojimbo, both sides are as corrupt as the other, so you can't help but agree with the samurai: the town would indeed be better off with both of them dead.
The samurai himself is a fascinating character, too. He seems completely uninterested in almost everything unless it involves violence. I especially love the scene early on where he gets both clans on the brink of battle and he just sits back to watch! :D
By a certain point, the proceedings were just different enough for me to start to appreciate Yojimbo in its own right – helped all the more by the fact that I felt as if I'd settled into the town environment.
Overall, this is an excellent tale of bringing balance to a savage community, and I certainly look forward to seeing it again when I don't have Fistful of Dollars on the mind.
My rating: 80%
