Ray Pride

We've seen our hero at a crossroads. He tosses a stick to choose his direction. He follows his fate. Here's the town he finds: We're in a wrecked world. A village has been leveled, burned, everything's run riot. Across the black-and-white Tohoscope wide screen, there is only char and smoke. A dog enters at a cheery trot, maneuvering around the mess, moving toward us. He's found his lucky snack for the day--a human hand. He moves on. A classic deadpan image, redolent of the conflicts, the unending human rivalries to come. That image, repeated by several other filmmakers in the years since, is typical of the dry wit in one of Akira Kurosawa's most playful films, a superb Western-styled samurai actioner. The camerawork is dauntingly elemental and precise, framing foreground and distance with uncommon exactitude. Kurosawa drew from work both Eastern and Western throughout his career, and this tale, finding Toshiro Mifune as a vagabond samurai who sells his services to both sides of a battle in a small town, is utterly indebted to Dashiell Hammett's pre-noir, whiff-of-hell's-own-carborundum novel "Red Harvest." (There are also pleasing likenesses to thematic elements, particularly the standoffs in "Shane," "Bad Day at Black Rock" and "High Noon.") Despite the title of Walter Hill's forgotten Bruce Willis retread, Kurosawa, years after his death, with timeless spectacles like this, remains the last man standing. It's a movie that rewards repeated viewings, particularly the rare ones on the big screen like these. 110m. Tohoscope. 35mm.

"Yojimbo" plays Friday and Saturday at the Siskel Film Center.

(2003-12-23)

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