Throne of Blood - Mifune's best?

[Tosh]

Ok I'm sure we've talked about this one over the years but I tivo'd this a couple weeks ago off ifc and watched it last night and it's still just mind blowing.

Toshiro Mifune chews through this movie like a pitbull through a leg, he's like a pack of wild wolves, his intensity is scary, you'd think a performance like this would be overdone but he somehow manages to rope it in, he really looks like he's lost it with his wild eyed stares.

One of the best endings ever, I need to count just how many arrows it took to take him down, looked like he had 10-20 in him before the one in the throat, and he still didn't go down right away.

[BlackLamaFaction]

I can't believe I missed that. Amazing film, one of Kurosawa's best. Mixing Shakespear with Samurai and it couldn't have worked better. Unforgettable ending beautifully shot by Asakazu Nakai. Easily for me one of the best perfomances he was able to get from Mifune. Not to take any thing from Yojimbo or Sanjuro for that matter. But there was something else going on with Mifune in Throne of Blood.

[bamboo spear]

I don't remember much about Throne of Blood, I last watched it on VHS in about 1994. I just remember that it was MacBeth and the awesomeness of the arrow scene. Mifune is always fantastic, but I think the Musashi Trilogy will always be my favorite work of his.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

My favorite film with Mifune will always be Yojimbo. I think a couple of his best performances (while Throne of Blood is quite good) are Red Beard (which I don't think ever gets enough credit; though it was the last film he would do with Kurosawa) and Samurai Rebellion (thank goodness for the Criterion release of this). The dislocation fight scene in Red Beard would be echoed later in Fist of Legend .