How do you know when you have stumbled into a dangerous part of town? A few broken windows? Stares from unfriendly locals, perhaps? How about seeing a dog carrying a severed human hand? That was the way the Japanese auteur, Akira Kurosawa, chose to warn us that his protagonist was entering a lawless and violent place in the opening minutes of Yojimbo (Bodyguard).
The black-and-white classic, which turned 50 last week, sees a ronin (masterless samurai, played to perfection by the Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune) offering his services to two rival crime bosses in the feudal village. Rather than fulfilling his role as faithful servant, however, he becomes "the bodyguard who kills the bodies he's hired to guard," as the renowned film critic Pauline Kael once put it.
Constantly twitching and chewing on a toothpick, the roving sword-for-hire clearly enjoys dispatching his foes and accomplishes his aim with overwhelming zeal. Before long, he brings the whole rotten edifice crashing to the ground with his wily double-crossings.
While pets snacking on their masters' appendages and samurai sword fights aplenty might suggest the film would be best reserved for fans of gore, most of Yojimbo's violence actually happens off-screen and the movie is intended as a black comedy.
Although not as revolutionary as Kurosawa's breakout movie, 1950's Rashomon, and not as widely loved as the sweeping 1954 film, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo saw the director at his genre-bending finest and provided a story that would continue to resonate in international cinema for decades.
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