- Overview
Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for treatment, which would drastically change his lifestyle. They form an uneasy friendship until Matsunaga's old boss Okada returns from prison.
- Release Date
27 April 1948
- DirectingAkira Kurosawa
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreCinemaSerf
17 November 2022
Takashi Shimura is impressive in this slightly squalid tale of a dipsomaniac doctor ("Sanada") charged with caring for a population housed in a bombed out part of the city. A large stagnant pond amidst their community is as likely to prove a source of toxicity as the pervading Yakuza activities. Those centre around "Matsunaga" (Toshirô Mifune) who turns up at the surgery with an injured hand. The doctor treats the wound but also suggest that the man might want to get treated for what he suspects is a case of tuberculosis. The two men fight - verbally and physically - and things continue to worsen when his boss "Okada" (Reizaburô Yamamoto) gets out of prison and starts to reassert his authority amongst the shopkeepers. Despite the initial hostility, Kurosawa manages to generate a considerable degree of amity between the two men as the story progresses. It is a friendship - of sorts - borne out of frustration and a desire to drink a great deal, and that dynamic becomes more engaging as the inevitability of parts of the story become ever clearer. There is some lovely guitar accompaniment to Fumio Hayasaka's score and the dialogue sparingly but convincingly guides us along as these two opposites start to attract. It is tightly paced with plenty of action as well as engendering, for me anyway, quite a degree of sympathy for the physician caught in a maelstrom of despair that is as much self-induced as anything.
More Like This
Blade Runner
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who...
See more
Dirty Dancing
Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find...
See more
Scarface
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami...
See more
Lost in Translation
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd...
See more
Lucky Number Slevin
Slevin is mistakenly put in the middle of a personal war between the city’s biggest criminal bosses. Under constant watch, Slevin must try not to...
See more
Mean Streets
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
See more
The Godfather Part II
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone...
See more
Zatoichi
Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by...
See more
Pocketful of Miracles
A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is...
See more
Black Lolita
A singer returns to her hometown and puts together a team of fighters to go after local gangsters.
See more
The International Gang of Kobe
In 1947, in Kobe, Japan, a local street gang fights for their survival when its turf is overrun by United States occupation forces and...
See more
In Wake of the Crashing Dawn
In a dystopian present, a young Japanese-American man battles the cascading effects of his family's wrongful incarceration in the 1940s.
See more
Rashomon
Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of...
See more
City of God
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who...
See more
The Last Samurai
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and...
See more
Lost Highway
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible...
See more
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
A member of an elite paramilitary counter-terrorism unit becomes traumatized after witnessing the suicide bombing of a young girl and is forced to...
See more
Moulin Rouge!
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century...
See more
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American...
See more
Brief Encounter
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with...
See more