Sword for Hire (1952)

"Some swords are useless no matter how you polish them"

Sword for Hire AKA Vagabonds in a Country at War told the tale of three samurai who survived the destruction of their castle and where they ended up afterwards. Two intersecting love triangles formed with one man at the point complicated matters between the former allies. It is important to note that the surviving print is missing 30 minutes, so while you may see running times of 2 hours 15 minutes listed, at present, the film is only 1 hour and 45 minutes long. It is also badly faded and degraded making some scenes difficult to see.

Mifune Toshiro as Hakate, Mikuni Rentaro as Jurota/Jurata, and Ichikawa Danshiro III as Yaheiji are facing imminent death when opposing forces are set to overrun their castle. Jurota abandons the fight taking Hakate's love, Kano, with him as cover. Hakate escapes during the fighting even though he is badly wounded. Yaheiji is captured but is able to overpower his captor and also escapes. Jurota joins another army hoping to make a name for himself. Hakate is rescued by the female bandit Oryo and nursed back to health. Yaheiji becomes the leader of another band of bandits. Hakate once more is on the run when it looks like he killed Oryo's father. He joins a competing army to Jurota's. Put that all in a blender and the characters start mixing, and falling in love, and just missing each other or running into one another. It becomes a complicated mess of human emotions.

Sword for Hire was entertaining but came across as a low budget samurai movie. The sets made the scale of the film quite small. Kurosawa Akira was credited as one of the writers, but there seems to be some debate as to how much he contributed.

Of all the characters, I was at first intrigued by Shirley Yamaguchi's Oryo. She was fierce and flamboyant but quickly devolved into the stereotypical obsessive and hysterical female character from this time period. Asaji Shinobu's Kano was the typical cardboard female character who could have been played by anyone. I enjoyed seeing Shimura Takashi as an inn/restaurant owner who gave completely ignored advice and snippets of wisdom to Jurota. When you could make him out through the foggy weather and foggy film, Mifune Toshiro looked sublime. Ichikawa made for a rough and tumble "rock" with a heart of gold. Mikuni was relegated to the braggart and self-serving character of Jurota, the "useless sword" Shimura's character spoke of.

I'm not sure where the missing minutes were from as there was a proper beginning, middle, and ending to the film. The story didn't feel strong enough to add 30 more minutes of flabby middle to it, or perhaps it would have enthralled me. Maybe the added scenes would have filled out the love triangles/pentagram/hexagram (these rotating couples are beyond my geometric skills) that ultimately seemed pointless in this version as the women only had eyes for Hakate. There wasn't enough fighting for a good civil war film or enough loving for a romance which left this Sword for Hire without a buyer.

7/3/23

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