Criterion has recently released some of Akira Kurosawa’s postwar films; one of the more notable films is Drunken Angel, which marks his first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune. I must say it is a distinctive Kurosawa film with his visual metaphors (in this films a filthy stagnant swamp), powerful Shakespearian weather, and interesting camera staging and angles. I must say that I also like it when Kurosawa works in the film noir genre (Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well, High and Low), since it has a slightly different context than the traditional western execution of the genre. It is the tale of a flawed but vigilant moralistic hero played by Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura (Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Stray Dog, etc…)-a doctor who is also a drunk. He tries to save a low level yakuza, Matsunaga (Mifune) who he sees a bit of his gruff younger self in. Matsunaga is suffering from TB and is struggling to maintain his position with the yakuza after an old boss (Reisaburo Yamamoto) arrives back on the scene after a spell in jail. I have to say that I appreciated the breezy pace for a Kurosawa film-it runs just over 90 minutes (98 minutes).
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