"Actor: Mifune"

• Red Sun | Blu Ray | (19/10/2015) from £12.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (76.98%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Billed as the first East meets West Western, and directed by Terence Young, RED SUN is based on a true story from the American Wild West of 1870, when paths cross for an outlaw (Charles Bronson, The Dirty Dozen), a gunfighter (Alain Delon, Le Samourai), a prostitute (Ursula Andress, Dr No) and a Samurai warrior (Toshiro Mifune, Rashomon). Bronson plays Link, a train robber forced by the Japanese Ambassador to help regain a priceless sword stolen by Link’s double crossing partner Gauche (Delon). Accompanied by Kuroda (Mifune), the Ambassador’s bodyguard, he travels the West in pursuit, along the way stopping in a brothel to pick up Gauche’s girlfriend (Andress) as hostage. Kuroda plans to kill Gauche straight away with the sword itself, to redeem his honour, but Link needs him alive to find the loot from their last robbery. Joined uneasily together with a common goal they have only seven days to find Gauche or Kuroda must die by his own sword.

• Red Sun | DVD | (07/06/2010) from £10.22   |  Saving you £5.77 (56.46%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It is the 19th century and two criminals Link and Gotch have a falling out after robbing a train. As a result Gotch not only takes off with the money but with a priceless golden sword owned by a Samurai passenger Kuroda. Despite their cultural differences and initial hostility Kuroda and Link pair up to find Gotch. The vengeful duo eventually track him down - only to find that a violent twist of events will change their lives forever...

• Red Sun (Cult Classics) | DVD | (09/09/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• High And Low | DVD | (28/03/2005) from £14.49   |  Saving you £5.50 (37.96%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Kurosawa drew on the thriller 'King's Ransom' by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter) for this contemporary study of the inequalities and hierarchical rigidity of modern Japan. In the first half of the film set in a single room an industrialist agonises on whether to pay the huge ransom demanded by kidnappers who have mistakenly snatched his chauffeur's son instead of his own. The second half of the film shot in a frenzied restless style on sleazy urban locations concentrates on the polic

• Stray Dog | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £11.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (66.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog is a masterful mix of film noir and police thriller set on the sweltering mean streets of Occupied Tokyo. When rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his pistol stolen from his pocket while on a bus his frantic attempts to track down the thief lead him to an illegal weapons market in the Tokyo underworld. But the gun has already passed from the pickpocket to a young gangster and Murakami's gun is identified as the weapon in the shooting of a woman

• Hell In The Pacific | DVD | (27/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  It is 1944 and the war in the Pacific is at its height. On a small deserted Pacific island a Japanese naval officer and U.S. naval pilot find themselves marooned. The two men are bitter wartime enemies but now stranded and with no one else to help them will they decide to fight each other to the death or work together for survival? As adversaries can their mutual hatred suspicion and mistrust be overcome and can humanity survive under such extreme conditions?

• Hidden Fortress | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £25.63   |  Saving you £-5.64 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A story of rival clans hidden gold and a princess in distress The Hidden Fortress is a thrilling mix of fairy story and samurai action movie. It was Kurosawa's first film shot in the widescreen process of Tohoscope and he exploited this to the full in the film's rich variety of landscape locations including the slopes of Mount Fuji. The Hidden Fortress became Kurosawa's biggest box-office hit to date and won several awards including the Golden Bear at the 1959 Berlin Film Fest

• Sanjuro | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (85.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sequel to Kurosawa's own 'Yojimbo' in which the crafty samurai helps a young man and his fellow clansmen save his uncle who has been framed and imprisoned by a corrupt superintendent...

• The Bad Sleep Well | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £14.59   |  Saving you £5.40 (37.01%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A tense re-working of Hamlet (adapted from a novel by Ed McBain) is a biting expos of the corruption and politics of greed at the heart of Japanese business. Beautifully photographed in ravishing black and white Tohoscope this is original Japanese version never before released in Europe. A young man marries the boss's daughter as part of a scheme to take revenge on the influential businessman who forced his father to commit suicide. Leisurely paced bitterly ironic the film emplo

• Shogun (New to Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (11/06/2018) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Remastered in amazing high definition, SHOGUN is one of the most famous and award-winning television events in history. From bestselling author James Clavell comes the sweeping story of love and war, set against the brutal background of feudal Japan at the beginning of the 17th century. Richard Chamberlain stars as John Blackthorne, a sailor shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. Rescued, he becomes an eyewitness to a deadly struggle involving Toranaga, a feuding warlord intent on becoming SHOGUN - the supreme military dictator. Blackthorne is irresistibly drawn to the magnificent Lady Mariko, the married confidant to Toranaga, while at the same time vying to become the first-ever foreigner to be made a samurai warrior. For the first time on Blu-ray, this landmark television event is packed with fascinating special features that take you inside the spectacular world of SHOGUN.

• Hell In The Pacific | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Hell in the Pacific is one of the most original and thoughtful war films of the 1960s. Fresh from Point Blank (1967) Lee Marvin reunited with director John Boorman for this elemental story of a US pilot and a Japanese naval officer washed ashore on an otherwise uninhabited Pacific island. Lee Marvin speaks English; Toshiro Mifune (The Seven Samurai) speaks Japanese; and the audience shares their frustrations as they attempt to communicate, as Boorman does not use subtitles. Once the men become aware of each other's presence they move from wary avoidance through conflict to an uneasy truce as they realise they will have to cooperate to survive. The naturalistic acting is key to the film's success, greatly aided by the fact that both stars served their respective countries in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War. Conrad Hall's cinematography is superb, using natural light to evoke the beauty of the island, and the wide Panavision frame to show the men's isolation and their reactions to each another. Boorman developed further his fascination with man against nature in Deliverance (1974) and The Emerald Forest (1985), and there wouldn't be another poetic war film until Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1999). On the DVD: The stereo sound is fine, atmospherically reproducing both the natural sounds of the island and Lalo Schfrin's imaginative score. The picture quality likewise is very good, with the image well focused with strong colours and plenty of detail. Unfortunately the 2.35:1 image has been panned and scanned to 1.33:1 TV ratio, destroying the scale and beauty of the compositions and sometimes meaning the viewer sees only one side of the interactions between the two men. Extras are perfunctory, with production notes, biographies of the stars and a "slide show". Considering even BBC2 occasionally shows the film in near full Pavavision and with Boorman's preferred, TS Elliot inspired ending, this DVD is a lost opportunity to bring a modern classic into the digital age. --Gary S Dalkin

• Red Beard | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The last and most ambitious of Akira Kurosawa's collaborations with Toshiro Mifune Red Beard marked the end of one of the most remarkable actor-director relationships in the history of cinema. Toshiro Mifune plays a commanding but humane doctor in a rural clinic in late 19th-century Japan. An idle and socially ambitious intern (Yuzo Kayama) arrives at the clinic and discovers the meaning of responsibility first to oneself and then to others. This intimate epic - a

• Red Sun | DVD | (19/10/2015) from £9.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (80.08%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Billed as the first East meets West Western, and directed by Terence Young, RED SUN is based on a true story from the American Wild West of 1870, when paths cross for an outlaw (Charles Bronson, The Dirty Dozen), a gunfighter (Alain Delon, Le Samourai), a prostitute (Ursula Andress, Dr No) and a Samurai warrior (Toshiro Mifune, Rashomon). Bronson plays Link, a train robber forced by the Japanese Ambassador to help regain a priceless sword stolen by Link’s double crossing partner Gauche (Delon). Accompanied by Kuroda (Mifune), the Ambassador’s bodyguard, he travels the West in pursuit, along the way stopping in a brothel to pick up Gauche’s girlfriend (Andress) as hostage. Kuroda plans to kill Gauche straight away with the sword itself, to redeem his honour, but Link needs him alive to find the loot from their last robbery. Joined uneasily together with a common goal they have only seven days to find Gauche or Kuroda must die by his own sword.

• Criterion Collection: Yojimbo & Sanjuro | Blu Ray | (23/03/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Rashomon | DVD | (22/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa is more than a classic: it's a cinematic archetype that has served as a template for many a film since. (Rashomon's most direct influence was on a Western remake, The Outrage, starring Paul Newman and directed by Martin Ritt.) In essence, the facts surrounding a rape and murder are told from four different and contradictory points of view, suggesting the nature of truth is something less than absolute. The cast, headed by Kurosawa's favourite actor, Toshiro Mifune, is superb. --Tom Keogh

• Red Sun | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £14.71   |  Saving you £-4.72 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  East meets West in this classic train robbery movie as one of the bandits gets away with not only all the money but a priceless Samurai Sword owned by Japanese gentleman Kuroda Jubie. Kuruda and his allies tear off in search of the stolen sword only to discover a violent twist of events that will change their lives forever...

• Ambush At Blood Pass | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Yojimbo a ronin (Mifune) is secretly commissioned to travel to Sanshu Pass. This once crucial thoroughfare in the time of the warlords is now just a backroad used by outcasts. There he is to wait until an undisclosed event occurs. On his journey he rescues a woman from her violent husband and takes her away with him. They arrive at an inn run by an old man and his granddaughter. This place has become home to a bunch of misfits including a one-time physician (Katsu) a wandering gambler and an officer of the law together with his prisoner. A dramatic chain of events unfolds forcing the once hostile and untrusting characters to unite in a common cause: their own survival. Ambush At Blood Pass examines the complex nature of the human condition under pressure.

• Scandal | DVD | (14/11/2005) from £5.54   |  Saving you £14.45 (72.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On holiday in the snow-covered mountains young painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) has a chance meeting with the popular singer Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi). After giving her a ride back to the hotel where they are both staying Ichiro is photographed with Miyako by paparazzi. A magazine creates an expos of their 'secret romance' based around this photograph and the brooding Ichiro ignites a bitter and dirty libel case in order to restore their honour... Akira Kurosawa's

• The Silent Duel | DVD | (22/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This 1949 rarely-seen masterpiece from legendary director Akira Kurosawa has never-before been released in the UK. During a life-saving operation young army surgeon Fujisaki (Mifune) contracts syphilis from a patient a disease virtually incurable in 1940's Japan and is forced to abandon his own true love. Based on an acclaimed play by Kazuo Nikuta The Silent Duel marked the second of numerous collaborations between the director and leading man Toshiro Mifune.

• Princess From The Moon | DVD | (13/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Toshiro Mifune stars in this enchanting film based on the traditional Japanese fairytale 'Kaguya' as the male half of a country couple who find a baby girl in the bamboo and raise her as their own until the truth is revealed when she is taken back...