A rōnin with no name arrives in a corrupt Japanese village. He learns the depressing town is controlled by two crime bosses, Ushitora and Seibei. The rōnin is a expert swordsman and cunning, but has no money. For gain, he decides to play these two crime bosses against each other by fabricating conflicts between the two. He constantly switches alliance between the two bosses, pocketing their money for information and favors. This seems fun and rather easy for him, until he learns that Ushitora tore a local family apart when he abducted mother Nui, and gave her away as a mistress. A switch was flipped in the untethered man that sent him on an unlikely crusade to rescue the family and bring peace—via tremendously violent means—to the Japanese village.
If this synopsis sounds like I copied-and-pasted last weeks recap, for “A Fistful of Dollars”, it’s because I did. Famously, Sergio Leone watched Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” and decided it would make a great western, essentially copying the story (and creating a teensy-bit of legal drama that prevented “Fistful” from being released in America for a few years).
“Yojimbo” is at least as good as “Fistful”, and improved in many ways. The story isn’t as tight, but you get several more fully-realized characters and a lot more information about the town. I loved Toshiro Mifune’s portrayal of the wandering rōnin and Tatsuya Nakadai’s Unosuke. Unosuke (the initial version of Ramón Rojo) is a clever, pretty-faced, pistol-toting gangster and serves as the only “real” competition for our rōnin (as well as a unique historic anchor, for those of us who don’t know our Japanese history). Our rōnin was just as fun as Eastwood’s “Man”, but the decision to stop “playing” the two families and rescue a town family felt richer in “Fistful”, where there seemed to be a deeply personal, painful reason for the Man’s turn. Either way, the two films are fascinating compliments and worth a watch, together or separate.