| | Akira Kurosawa takes his main man Toshirô Mifune out of the samurai era and into the contemporary business world, where Mifune still finds himself in a life and death struggle, this time involving the highly corrupt Public Corporation, whose brass appear to have been embezzling huge amounts of money, and threatening those who don't cooperate to the point where they commit suicide. "You can't beat the system" is basically the message bleated out by Wada, one such would-be suicide of a clerk who is saved by a revenge-bent Mifune, and that message carries straight through the movie in chilling fashion.
It's very interesting to see Mifune at work in this setting. He's still the upright, strong, somewhat violent justice-seeker, but now his usual aura of unquestioned samurai command is hidden beneath the slicked-back hair and thick black-rimmed glasses of a 1960 executive secretary, to the point where I didn't even recognize him until halfway through the movie (okay, so I'm not the world's greatest Mifune expert). Kurosawa really is saying "look at our modern world, there is worse violence and injustice here than in the old days, and it goes unpunished--rewarded, even--while heroes are trampled underfoot," and Mifune is his perfect example.
As usual, Kurosawa gets wonderful performances out of a compact cast, whose relationships evolve and develop the whole plot in a way that feels very convincing. He is helped again by very careful, long, still shots, and gorgeous black and white photography.
If I could say one thing bad about the movie, and I can, it's that it is a little on the slow side. 151 minutes isn't anything to scoff at, and really, the pacing in some spots does slow down to the point where we start to play with the change in our pocket, no matter how intrigued we are with the developing characters.
The story also relies quite a bit on the old pre-moving-picture technique of telling a story by having a character tell it; this stands out in particular at the end, where most of what would have been the climax is told to us in a reconstructed narration by Mifune's buddy. It's a technique that hasn't aged well, perhaps, and particularly loses something in translation, I would think, since you aren't getting the full impact of every nuance and inflection straight from the actor's lips.
Still, patience will pay off; the epic, timeless elements of the story become clearer in my mind as I think about the story now that it's over. Kurosawa crafted nuanced, resonant performances here. There are no easy answers, and the ending is relentless and unforgiving.
In addition to Mifune, and perhaps others who I haven't recognized, Kurosawa brought along Kamatari Fujiwara, who played one of the two scoundrelly rascals foiling Mifune in "The Hidden Fortress" see entry 61), and who here plays the hapless, well-meaning, and highly sympathetic would-be loyal suicide, Wada. |
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