The swordplay in Sanjuro is perhaps even more impressive than it is in Yojimbo, though the gentler tone gives the film an altogether softer effect.

| Jan 9, 2025

This is fun but, compared with Kurosawa's other 60s efforts, relatively slight.

| Aug 7, 2012

Satirical Samurai action of the highest order.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2012

The relative linearity of the film can't help but come as something of a disappointment after the feast of Yojimbo.

| Apr 20, 2011

The charm of this fascinating Toho production, stylishly directed by Akira Kurosawa, is the personality of the hero, powerfully played by Toshiro Mifune.

| Mar 26, 2009

Kurosawa was pressured by his producers into directing this sequel to Yojimbo, and rose to the occasion by making his funniest and least overtly didactic film

| Jun 24, 2006

Mifune's disheveled samurai is an almost cartoonlike send-up of the established samurai image.

| Oct 1, 2003

A surprising, fetching, beautifully made film that fitly propounds the lesson of his own professionalism: 'Never send a boy to do a man's work.'

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2003