Toshirô Mifune

Drunken Angel

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Matsunaga and Sanada almost come to blows

Apparently Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio were discussing a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel. It never happened, but we do at least have the 1948 original, a study of two flawed men in the Japanese equivalent of a film noir setting. On the one side a gangster played by Toshirô Mifune. On the other an alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura. Kurosawa wastes no time throwing them together. In the film’s opening scene Mifune’s Matsunaga is already at the drunken doctor’s surgery with a bullet in his hand. The doctor gives him short shrift while tending to the wound – he doesn’t like gangsters and isn’t shy about saying so. Matsunaga takes … Read more

Stray Dog

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Murakam with gun

Subtle, understated Japanese film noir, 1949’s Stray Dog appears to be Akira Kurosawa’s embrace of the post-War reconstruction of Japan in the image of the American conqueror. It may be something else as well. But before all that, is the “stray dog” we see panting in the opening titles meant to be Japan itself? That dog does not otherwise feature in the film. No dog does. Instead of canines, Kurosawa beetles away at a Maguffin leading us from one end of his movie to the other. The story of a diligent young cop, Detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune), who one sweltering day on a crowded bus has his police revolver lifted from his jacket … Read more

High and Low

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Mr Gondo with the ransom money, a cop looks on in the background

Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low – one of a run of successful movies from him in the late 1950s and early 1960s – is something of a surprise. It sets off in one direction, with a moral dilemma, only to wind up in a different place entirely, as a police procedural the likes of which you can catch on TV any night of the week. This comes as a bit of a relief, because for its first third the tension is so exquisitely pitched it’s hard to look at the screen. It’s based on an Ed McBain thriller and tells the story of a businessman locked in the middle of a struggle for control … Read more

The Hidden Fortress

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Princess Yuki and General Makabe

The Hidden Fortress is a film by Akira Kurosawa and just that fact alone – “a film by Akira Kurosawa” – is enough to get it bracketed as an arthouse movie. Which is entirely ridiculous if you watch it, because there’s nothing difficult or abstruse going on here, no philosophical musing, no challenging style experiments to overcome or difficulties over character, plot or chronology. It’s an out and out Saturday evening adventure movie with action, comedy, a pretty girl and a strapping hero. It’s that aspect of it, its entertainment value, that first attracted George Lucas to it when he was first scoping out his first Star Wars film. Great though Star Wars is, … Read more