Best Toshiro Mifune Movie?

[irishlight42]

I know I'm a dope for the "classics", but my favorite will forever be The Seven Samurai. I also liked him in a lot of less acclaimed roles, such as his amazing performance with Lee Marvin in Hell in the Pacific. I also would tend to say that as Isoroku Yamamoto, the star and in my personal opinion even hero of the film (Yamamoto was far from an extremist, and furthermore an incredibly moral and compassionate man as well as a great commander in SOOOO many various ways), he really made the movie TORA! TORA! TORA! (course it was pretty cool that they also featured a bit more on Mitsuo Fuchida for once, as he was a really amazing man as well)

So anyways, the main topic of this thread, what are YOUR favorite Toshiro Mifune performances? :samurai:

[Nothingness]

Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Miyamoto Musashi, and the Hidden Fortress are my fave.

[nhannah]

I've always been a fan of the Samurai trilogy.

[Index]

There are too many good ones to choose the best. Some of my favourites are Drunken Angel (a young Mifune, brooding, young, rebellious Yakuza), Rashomon (playing a bunch of different roles), The Hidden Fortress (great spear fight), The Bad Sleep Well (contemporary setting, about revenge, a tragedy), and Yojinbo. The great thing about him was that he played a distinctively different role in almost every film.

I heard recently that Holywood is to make yet another remake, this time of Drunken Angel.

[sl0thmachin3]

Rashomon! Great performance there by Toshiro Mifune. Tsubaki Sanjuro and Tengoku to Jigoku also rate high IMHO.
:-)

[Sensuikan San]

Rashomon! ... but I also agree ... he did give "Tora, Tora, Tora!" an authenticity.

ジョン

[Reiku]

Stray Dog (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041699/)

It's not only the best Mifune film, it's the best film period.

[Da Monstar]

The samurai Trilogi (and it must be viewed in one go!)

[xerxes99]

Yojimbo of course, and Seven Samurai. But I do love the first movie I ever saw him in when he played the sub commander in "1941".

[jonerik]

Of his non-Kurosawa films I'm particularly fond of 1969's Samurai Banners (Furin kazan). It's an interesting story about a samurai who's unusually gifted as a strategist, but thinks nothing of doing whatever it takes to get what he wants, even if "whatever it takes" isn't an honorable path. The movie follows his rise from ronin to general while he attempts to link the southern coast of his lord's domain through conquest to the northern coast.

His performance in Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo is pretty good, too. Although Kurosawa didn't direct it, and it's never explicitly stated that this is the same character as in the Kurosawa films, there are a lot of nods to Yojimbo and Sanjuro throughout the film, suggesting that Mifune is playing an older and wiser version of the same guy.

Of his Kurosawa films I'm probably most fond of Throne of Blood. The look on his face when the arrows are landing all around him is amazing (of course, it didn't require much acting - those were real arrows).

[irishlight42]

They knew how to ACTUALLY do their own stunts in those days! Toshiro Mifune is forever the greatest action hero, not to mention his numerous amazing performances as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Does anyone know how I can get this one?:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063822/

I really want to see this, but I don't know how to obtain it.