Wonderful Eastern, with Tishuro Mifune spending the first 3rd of the movie munching rice, meat and other assorted goodies, drinking sake and killing tough-talking bandit types, whilst nonchalantly bringing the town to a boiling tension as he plays one gang against the other in assorted ways.
The bombastic jangling sound design, Mifune’s charismatic killer, the silly gurning faces of the heavies, and Kurosawa’s wonderful eye for composing shots and letting the camera enjoy the movement all adds up to a real treat and highmark of samurai genre movies.
The daddy of Lone Wolf and Cub movies, and the partial granddaddy of the impressive recent 13 Assassins.
Recommended.