A Fistful of Yojimbo

Yesterday afternoon, I saw a Clint Eastwood meme showing photos of how he looked at different ages. This meme brought to my mind one of Eastwood's earliest films from 1964 - A Fistful of Dollars . It's been maybe two years since I watched the film online and I thought I'd watch it again.

I located a copy at Daily Motion; I enjoyed watching it again, even though there are quite a few ad breaks.

During one of those commercial breaks, I opened the wikipedia page for the film where I learned that the film was an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film, Yojimbo . After a quick search, I located a copy of that film at archive.org. The film is widely regarded as one of the best films by Kurosawa and one of the greatest films ever made.

There is a link to it above, and I highly recommend it. I'd also suggest that anyone who hasn't watched the Eastwood film recently to watch it again before viewing the Japanese film. Of course, there are slight differences - due to the fact that one takes place in Japan during the 1860s, while the other is set in a small town on the Mexico–United States border. None the less, Sergio Leone kept much of the original story (after a fashion).

Like A Fistful of Dollars , Yojimbo spawned 2 sequels - Sanjuro and Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo . These two films are also located on the archive.org website. I'll be watching both soon.

I think it should be safe to say that the rest of the Yojimbo trilogy won't resemble the last two films in the Dollar trilogy.