Toshiro Mifune Movies

It's December of 1941, and the people of California are in varying states of unease, ranging from a sincere desire to defend the country to virtual blind panic in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thus begin several story threads that comprise the "plot" of this strange period comedy, a sort of satirical disaster movie, from Steven Spielberg. The stories and story threads involve lusty young men, officers (Tim Matheson) and civilians (Bobby Di Cicco) alike, eager to bed the young ladies of their dreams; Wild Bill Kelso, a nutty fighter pilot (John Belushi) following what he thinks is a squadron of Japanese fighters along the California coast; a well-meaning but clumsy tank crew (including John Candy) led by straight-arrow, by-the-book Sgt. Tree (Dan Aykroyd), who doesn't recognize the thug (Treat Williams) in his command; and homeowner Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty), who is eager to do his part for the nation's defense and, despite the misgivings of his wife (Lorraine Gary), doesn't mind his front yard overlooking the ocean being chosen to house a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. There is also a pair of grotesquely inept airplane spotters (Murray Hamilton, Eddie Deezen) who are doing their job from atop a ferris wheel at a beachfront amusement park; a paranoid army colonel (Warren Oates) positive that the Japanese are infiltrating from the hills; a big dance being held on behalf of servicemen, being attended by a lusty young woman of size (Wendie Jo Sperber) eager to land a man in uniform; and General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell (Robert Stack), in charge of the defense of the West Coast, who can't seem to get anyone to listen to him when he says to keep calm. And, oh yes, there's also a real Japanese submarine that has gotten all the way to the California coast under the command of its captain (Toshiro Mifune) and a German officer observer (Christopher Lee), only to find itself without a working compass or usable maps. Its captain won't leave until the sub has attacked a militarily significant, honorable target, and the only one that anyone aboard ship knows of in California is Hollywood. By New Year's Eve, all of these characters are going to cross paths, directly or once-removed, in a comedy of errors and destruction strongly reminiscent of the finale to National Lampoon's Animal House (as well as several disaster movies from the same studio), but on a much larger and more impressive scale. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Also released as Kamizake, the Japanese Attack Squadron is a docudrama concerning the suicide pilots of World War 2. An acceptable amount of screen time is devoted to the psychological makeup of the pilots. There is also a cursory overview of the "Die for the Rising Sun" groupthink of the Japanese populace. The film's greatest value is its selection of rare wartime newsreel footage, showing the Kamikaze in action. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This sweeping historical epic has sometimes been labelled the Gone with the Wind of Japan; at any rate, it's almost the same length as Gone (the film was originally released in two parts). Chusha Ichikawa plays a powerful and ruthless feudal lord who battles virtuous young noble Yuzo Kayama. Ichikawa is temporarily victorious when he tricks Kayama into committing Hara Kiri. Vengeance is meted out by Kayama's forty-seven samurai retainers. Based on a venerable Japanese legend, the story of Chushingura has been filmed several times, but only the 1941 version (47 Ronin) matched the grandeur of director Hiroshi Inagaki's 1962 version. In some English-speaking countries, Chushingura has been released in a shorter version titled The Loyal 47 Ronin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Isusu Yamada plays a pretty Japanese tea seller who befriends widowed laborer Toshiro Mifune. Before either party knows what has happened, the two have fallen in love. Celebrating their impending marriage, the couple spend a wonderful evening in downtown Tokyo, accompanied by the tea seller's young son (Harunori Kametani). Perhaps it is best that none of the participants in this nocturnal excursion are aware that tragedy looms just around the corner. Running a brief 59 minutes, Down Town is not so much a feature film as a profoundly moving tone poem. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this Japanese war movie, a rebellious war hero disobeys orders. For his punishment, the fellow is sent to the Chinese front. He goes there and finds that his brother was killed for desertion. This enrages the soldier who explodes and finds himself in deeper trouble, and he is faced with a difficult choice: he can either be court-martialed, or he can perform a kamikaze mission. He chooses the latter, and along with a cadre of freed prisoners, must capture a Chinese fort. They do succeed in their mission, but unfortunately the brave fighters are overpowered by the sheer numbers of the Chinese who continually bombard the fortress. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

There's a few million dollars' worth of star power and a nickel's worth of plot in the lavish race-car melodrama Grand Prix. Among the participants in this annual cross-continent competition are characters played by James Garner, Yves Montand, Brian Bedford, and Antonio Sabato. Interested parties include Toshiro Mifune (his voice dubbed by Paul Frees), Adolfo Celi, and Claude Dauphin, while the women who agonize on the sidelines include Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Walter, and Françoise Hardy. The racing sequences are top-rank, cleverly utilizing those 1960s devices of helicopter angles and multiple screens. Oscars went to editor Frederic Steinkamp (among others) and the sound-effects supervisor Franklin E. Milton. Filmed on location, Grand Prix made back its cost about half a week into its run. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on King's Ransom, an "87th Precinct" novel by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter), High and Low stars Toshiro Mifune as Gondo, a wealthy industrialist. Gondo is contacted by a gang of kidnappers, who inform him that they've kidnapped his son. The crooks demand a huge ransom for the boy's return -- an amount so huge that it will utterly bankrupt Gondo. As the harried businessman prepares to pay the ransom, he discovers that his son is safe at home: the kidnappers have accidentally snatched the son of his chauffeur. Does Gondo drop his payoff plans, or does he do the honorable thing and rescue his employee's son? This dilemma is but one aspect of the multilayered character study from the unbeatable team of star Toshiro Mifune and filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who directs this superb film with his usual depth and impeccable eye for detail and character. As a man forced to make impossible decisions, Mifune gives a nuanced, perceptive and psychologically convincing performance. While not one of Kurosawa's master works, High and Low, with its grim reality and moral ambiguity stands as a superb example of film noir at its best. High and Low was originally released in Japan as Tengoku To-Jigoku. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This infamous Korean War drama is best known as the movie produced by Rev. Sung Myung Moon's Unification Church, though more people seem to have read stories about its troubled production or disastrous reception at the box office than to have actually seen it: on its initial release, it grossed less than $2 million on a budget of $50 million. Starring Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur (psychics reportedly told producers that the late General was happy with the casting choice), Inchon also features Ben Gazzara and Jacqueline Bisset as a married couple whose relationship is tested by the trials of war, and boasts as impressive as supporting cast as money can buy, including David Janssen, Richard Roundtree, Omar Sharif, Toshiro Mifune, and Rex Reed (who was perhaps hoping for a role that could stand beside his work in Myra Breckenridge).The lavish battle scenes are staged by director Terence Young (best known for his work on several early James Bond films), and the film presents one of your only opportunities to see Olivier, the greatest actor of his generation, talk like W.C. Fields while smoking a corn-cob pipe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Sho Kosugi stars (as well as produced) this picturesque and exciting swashbuckler, directed by Gordon Hessler. Kosugi plays Mayeda, a 17th-century Japanese samurai whose clan, headed by Lord Ieyasu (Toshiro Mifune), is waging a bloody battle with a rival clan. The rival clan has the advantage of using punk-burning muskets, which work fine unless it rains, rendering the firearms useless. Ieyasu sends Mayeda to Spain to one-up the rival clan by arranging the purchase of flintlock rifles, which are immune to rain. Mayeda is accompanied on his journey by Ieyasu's young heir Yorimune (Kane Kosugi), along with a traitor -- the clan's Catholic spiritual advisory Father Vasco (Norman Lloyd), who has made a deal with the rival clan to kill Mayeda and Yorimune and to make sure that the flintlock rifles never reach their destination. However, the plot fails. In the process, the gold to pay for the rifles falls overboard, and Mayeda arrives in Spain penniless at the court of King Philip (Christopher Lee). King Philip refuses to give Mayeda the rifles, until Mayeda saves his life during an attack of rebels. But even though Mayeda now has the king on his side, he has earned the wrath of his advisor Don Pedro (David Essex) by falling in love with his fiancee Cecilia (Polly Walker). Mayeda and Don Pedro eventually tangle in mortal combat. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Toshiro Mifune stars as a shipwrecked sailor who joins a Japanese priest in his search for the bones of Buddha in this children's adventure. The duo are hounded by the forces of a nearby king from his castle fortress. The heroes show the king the error of his ways and even provide him with a pretty woman to take as his queen. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In the Japanese detective saga/action film Ankokugai no Taiketsu (AKA Last Gunfight), the legendary Toshiro Mifune portrays Fujioka, a detective facing corruption charges. As the story opens, he receives a demotion and gets reassigned to a crime-ridden district overrun by two notoriously violent and ruthless Yakuza clans: the Oka and the Kazuka. The Oka attempt to buy Fujioka off and recruit him as an ally against the Kazuka, but the detective befriends Murayama, a former Kazuka member hell-bent on revenge against the Oka for rubbing out his wife. Fujioka thus prepares to take on the Oka as adversaries. The tone of the film is (given its subject matter) somewhat atypical: light, playful and fun. Koji Tsuruta, Yoko Tsukasa, Jun Tazaki and Makoto Sato co-star. Though this film went long unreleased theatrically in the United States, students of Japanese cinema will be fascinated to know that it did air quietly on New York's Channel 7, late one night in March 1967. Ankokugai no Taiketsu also screened at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival, 37 years after its Japanese premiere. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

An expensive war epic, Midway emulates The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! in attempting to re-create a famous World War II battle from both the American and Japanese viewpoints. The 1942 battle of Midway was the turning point of the War in the Pacific; the Japanese invasion fleet was destroyed, and America's string of humiliating defeats was finally broken. Though the battle itself was sufficiently dramatic to fill two films, Midway also has plotline involving the mixed-race relationship between Ensign Garth (Edward Albert), son of Navy Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), and Haruko Sakura (Christina Kokubo), a Hawaiian girl of Japanese descent. The real-life personages depicted herein include American Admirals Nimitz (Henry Fonda), Halsey (Robert Mitchum) and Spruance (Glenn Ford), and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune, his voice once again dubbed by Paul Frees, whom Mifune personally selected for the job). For its original road show release, Midway was offered in the "Sensurround" process, which electronically shook and vibrated the audience's chairs during the battle sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This well-wrought, visually stunning tale from Japanese mythology is directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and relates the adventures of a legendary Prince Yamato Takeru (Toshiro Mifune). The reason for those adventures is linked to the creation and/or discovery of the "three treasures" basic to the Shinto religion and the mythic origins of Japan (Yamato) and her emperors. These "three treasures" are a comma-shaped jewel, a mirror, and a sword. As the Prince goes about slaying dragons and surviving all manner of natural disasters -- earthquakes, volcanos, floods -- the heroic stories of how Japan and its imperial family came into being are told in epic style. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide