Yojimbo
1961, NR, 110 min.
Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Starring Toshiro Mifune, Eijiro Tono, Seizaburo Kawazu.

One of the most popular of all Kurosawa’s movies, Yojimbo has also provided the template for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and Walter Hills’s Last Man Standing. The plot has a masterless samurai coming between two warring factions and playing both sides against the middle. It’s timeless drama.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.