Sanjuro 4K 1962 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

In his wanderings through the cities and towns samurai Sanjuro stumbles upon a serious conflict in one of the clans - the head of the clan is arrested with his family on false charges, and his place is about to be taken by the evil schemer Kikui. Only a handful of young warriors are ready to fight for justice. Sanjuro comes to their aid. His weapons are cunning, surprise, fearlessness and, of course, his sword, on which the blood of villains has no time to dry.

Review 4K Movie

Admittedly, sitting down to watch this picture, glorified by the name of the deity of Japanese cinematography, I expected to see a boring spectacle, a naive feudal-medieval narrative on a black-and-white, time-worn film. But gradually the story, unencumbered by twists and turns, drew me in, and by the middle of the tape I finally fell in love with the movie!

Kikuya, the Manager, decided to frame the good Chamberlain, who was in power in one of the Japanese provinces, and, taking his wife and daughter hostage, wanted to force him to sign a false accusation. Having gathered a small army headed by a clever and shrewd chief of guards, the Manager has only to get rid of 9 samurai loyal to the Chamberlain, which is where the picture begins. But then a strange type comes into the picture, the loose, willful, powerful, 'naked blade' Matsuto Sanjuro, whom we met in 'The Bodyguard', Kurosawa's previous film. The samurai had no apparent motives other than the defense of justice. Why he got involved in the wrong business remains a mystery to me personally. But from that very moment on, as you can guess, things went from bad to worse for the bad guys!

Perhaps, such things as the motives of the Manager, the good character of the Chamberlain, the backstory of the developing events, were intentionally thrown overboard in order not to stretch the movie to keep its dynamics. And they are not the point! The most interesting thing here is the chess game between the team of 'intruders' and the character Mifune, a strong-willed and willful samurai, who almost single-handedly defeated his opponent. Alone, because the team of young samurai who ran after him like ducklings after their mother was a model of human stupidity at the beginning, and remained so at the end.

So, we are plunged into the action from the get-go. And although the events and actions, and even more so the dialogs, give off a mile away naive, the movie bribes with the soulfulness with which it was created. With a very predictable ending, Matsuta's moves are just a game. But what a game! It's a real thriller, exciting, tense, diluted for pro forma with the trademark samurai action, where the wielder of the katana decides the outcome of the battle. The duels are executed lightning fast. A couple seconds and the three bad guys are already writhing in death agony. I rewound those two seconds several times in slow motion. Nobody shoots like that nowadays. It's too unspectacular. But here, in 'Brave Samurai', it's spectacular, it's cool. Ten seconds is enough for Toshiro Mifune's character to deal with a dozen and a half fighters running away from him like a flock of sheep from a fearsome predator. Believe me, today it is worth ten minutes of modern action with the most powerful special effects.

However, not only the perfect mastery of the sword attracts the image of fearless samurai. It is charisma, powerful, unshakable inner strength of this man. Such a hero was able to brilliantly embody on the screen Toshiro Mifune. He leads the story seasoned with Japanese medieval flavor.

As for the production, Kurosawa is responsible for it. Observe carefully the composition of the shots. The operator's angles. The grand and yet graceful style of this virtuoso director. Filmed in the middle of his life, when his style of filming was already fully formed, 'The Brave Samurai', seemingly so simply made, is brilliant. Kurosawa manages to say so much to the viewer in one static shot! This is how the great masters filmed. I'll give you just one example to make it clear what I'm talking about.

In the art of the Quatrocento, before the arrival of Raphael in painting, marking the advent of the High Renaissance, were very common numerous frescoes on various religious subjects and group portraits with the same composition. Imagine a painting with the proportions of a wide canvas in a movie theater. The characters are lined up on it in a line, so that the portraits of all the actors are on the same level. Most often each of them is engaged in some kind of activity, someone is talking, someone is looking away, and so on. So, in Kurosawa's movie, many shots are built on the same principle. It's an economy of expression. Now, where a modern director would fragment a frame into ten pieces, not always successfully spending time and effort on each character, Kurosawa puts all the characters in one frame, and it looks like a fresco of those distant times.

But the stylistic peculiarities of the picture do not stop there. Kurosawa's half-century-old film remains for us a witness of another era in the history of cinematography, showing its strongest and best sides. At the same time, he himself describes a very different era, feudalism in Japan, being an imperishable masterpiece that can serve as a good lesson to an aspiring cinematographer. And let there be heavy-handed muttering music, let the sound rattle after so many years of film life! This is the kind of movie you should and can love. It is tempered by time like the steel of a samurai sword. My respects.