Yojimbo (movie)

Yojimbo is a 1961 film by Akira Kurosawa, in which a samurai arrives at a small town with competing crime lords making their money from gambling, and convinces each crime lord to hire him as protection from the other. The film parodies many conventions of western films, including the canonical taciturn gunslinger, and the helpless townsfolk. Its cinematography mimics conventional shots in western films including that of the lone hero in a wideshot, facing an enemy or enemies from a distance when the wind kicks up dust between the two. Much of the music is also clearly "Western". Kurosawa nevertheless brings to the mix a clearly Japanese attention to visual texture and composition.

Yojimbo was later remade as A Fistful of Dollars, a spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, and remade, yet again, in a 20th century "gangster" genre, as "Last Man Standing", starring Bruce Willis.