Faster and funnier than its predecessor, Yojimbo, the souped-up Sanjuro gave Toshiro Mifune a chance to reprise, and possibly top, his role as that film's masterless samurai. A funky bundle of twitch and stink, the soldier of fortune becomes the leader of a band of dedicated young warriors who are determined to fight corruption and rescue a kidnapped chancellor from a warlord (scary Tatsuya Nakadai). The green, idealistic lads seem to know bushido only in theory, so are eager to be trained by Mifune's worldly warrior. Deftly satirizing the showy but empty heroics of the corrupted samurai code, Sanjuro revels in the contrast between the fervent but inept "boy-scout" samurai and their smelly mentor. The final showdown between Mifune and Nakadai is legendary, its flurry of flashing steel and geyser of gore shockingly funny - the template for the jokey screen violence of much subsequent cinema. "Uproarious . . . The tone switches to magnificent vehemence in the heart-stopping finale" (Time Out London).
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