It’s hard to forget the first time you see Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai.” He prowls and prances like a demented street urchin, giggling with sick glee in some moments and screaming with fury in others. As director Martin Scorsese astutely noted, Mifune often projected the unpredictable screen presence of a caged animal. There was never any telling what he’d do next, only that there was no turning away from it, either.
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Of course, Mifune and Kurosawa went onto make a number of other classic films together, including “Rashomon” and the “Yojimbo” cycle. But Mifune’s private life is another story entirely. Like the often feral, larger-than-life characters he played so memorably, Mifune was a man of large and sometimes unsavory appetites. As a youth, he was cocky and constantly got into fights, showing no respect for authority and little interest in the arts. As a young man, he came to acquire a prodigious taste for lavish cars and drinking to excess. He was beaten up by his military superiors, picked fights with gangsters and changed the face of international cinema forever.
Wait a second, is this a story about a Hemingway protagonist? Actually, it’s the rough synopsis for a documentary about Mifune’s life and career called “Mifune: The Last Samurai.” Directed by Steven Okazaki and narrated by none other than Keanu Reeves, ‘Mifune’ is an in-depth look at the actor who exploded onto the Japanese film scene and wound up energizing everyone and everything around him.
The film also includes interviews with the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, both of whom reserve ample praise for Mifune’s indelible screen presence and palpable, eerily un-forced intensity. It’s an interesting angle when you consider how many of the movies Mifune starred in have gone on to influence Western pop moviemaking, from Kurosawa’s looming influence on the “Star Wars” universe to the DNA of “Seven Samurai” finding its way into Antoine Fuqua’s new remake (if just barely). ‘Mifune’ just recently screened in both Venice and Telluride and word is that Strand Releasing will be giving it a limited run before the year is up. [Indiewire]