Is Toshiro Mifune the greatest actor ever?

Maybe. Anyway, I just finished watching another of his movies, this one without Kurosawa at the helm, and he turned in another excellent performance, though the directing and script let him down a bit at the end. Samurai Rebellion is, unsurprisingly, about a samurai who rebels against his lord. Mifune is our protagonist and is set up to have good cause for rebelling against an unjust lord. Were I to lay out the whole of his complaint, I’d end up describing the first half of the movie to you and that’s a bit much. Suffice it to say that the director did a good job in the first half, setting up the situation and introducing the characters and fleshing them out well, and failed to complete the payoff in the second half. The end was what I hoped it would be, but it didn’t seem to be executed very well. The fight choreography was lacking too, but then modern movie-goers are spoiled by the slick, effects-aided fight scenes from more recent martial arts movies. All in all, a decent movie and one that I’d give three or three and a half out of five. This is a movie genre of which I am particularly fond and the movie was average or a bit better.