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131-529: Antoine Fuqua ( / ˈ æ n t w ɒ n ˈ f j uː k w ə / ; born May 30, 1965) is an American film director known for his work in the action and thriller genres. He was originally known as a director of music videos, and made his film debut in 1998 with The Replacement Killers . His critical breakthrough was the 2001 crime thriller Training Day , winning the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Director . His subsequent films include Tears of

262-448: A biographical film about Michael Jackson , starring Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson and being produced by Graham King . Fuqua and actress Lela Rochon became engaged in 1998 and married on April 9, 1999. Daughter Asia Rochon Fuqua was born on July 28, 2002, and son Brando in May 2004. Fuqua has a son, Zachary, from a previous relationship. He also has two granddaughters. When asked by

393-522: A Japanese context. Kurosawa instructed his leading actress, Isuzu Yamada , to regard the work as if it were a cinematic version of a Japanese rather than a European literary classic. Given Kurosawa's appreciation of traditional Japanese stage acting, the acting of the players, particularly Yamada, draws heavily on the stylized techniques of the Noh theater. It was filmed in 1956 and released in January 1957 to

524-427: A big hit, quickly making back the money invested in it and providing the studio with a product that they could, and did, market internationally—though with extensive edits. Over time—and with the theatrical and home video releases of the uncut version—its reputation has steadily grown. It is now regarded by some commentators as the greatest Japanese film ever made, and in 1999, a poll of Japanese film critics also voted it

655-451: A boom period of high-speed growth and rising standards of living. Out of step with the prevailing mood of the era, Kurosawa's films questioned the possibility of redemption through personal responsibility, particularly in Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths . He recognized this, and deliberately aimed for a more light-hearted and entertaining film for his next production while switching to

786-423: A brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of

917-529: A call to take the follow-up exams, and director Kajirō Yamamoto , who was among the examiners, took a liking to Kurosawa and insisted that the studio hire him. The 25-year-old Kurosawa joined P.C.L. in February 1936. During his five years as an assistant director, Kurosawa worked under numerous directors, but by far the most important figure in his development was Yamamoto. Of his 24 films as A.D. , he worked on 17 under Yamamoto, many of them comedies featuring

1048-426: A cinema. Lee and Coburn, who insists on helping, arrive barely in time to prevent Ryker and Collins from killing the boy, and Ryker is killed by Lee in the subsequent gunfight. Concerned that Lee and Coburn will make their way back to his base of operations, Wei makes plans to flee the country and hunt down Lee's mother and sister himself. However, when two guards open the main gate for Wei and his entourage to leave in

1179-558: A contemporary play by Kazuo Kikuta and, together with Taniguchi, adapted it for the screen. The Quiet Duel starred Toshiro Mifune as an idealistic young doctor struggling with syphilis , a deliberate attempt by Kurosawa to break the actor away from being typecast as gangsters. Released in March 1949, it was a box office success, but is generally considered one of the director's lesser achievements. His second film of 1949, also produced by Film Art Association and released by Shintoho ,

1310-431: A costume designer. Shortly before his marriage, Kurosawa was pressured by the studio against his will to direct a sequel to his debut film. The often blatantly propagandistic Sanshiro Sugata Part II , which premiered in May 1945, is generally considered one of his weakest pictures. Kurosawa decided to write the script for a film that would be both censor-friendly and less expensive to produce. The Men Who Tread on

1441-486: A critical and commercial success. Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered lost. He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers in The Most Beautiful , a propaganda film which he shot in a semi-documentary style in early 1944. To elicit realistic performances from his actresses, the director had them live in

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1572-413: A distant 21st place with $ 131,727 in revenue. The film went on to top out domestically at $ 19,204,929 in total ticket sales through a 5-week theatrical run. For 1998 as a whole, the film would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 90. Worldwide, the film grossed $ 39.5 million in all territories. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 37% of 38 sampled critics gave the film a positive review;

1703-516: A filmmaker and how Kurosawa influenced his own perspective on filmmaking stating: "[screen writer Hashimoto's] ... working with Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni , was so beautiful and poetic and powerful and heartbreaking. It was all about justice, it was all about sacrifice, and it made me want to be one of those guys". His first feature films were the John Woo -produced action film The Replacement Killers (1998), starring Chow Yun Fat and

1834-488: A forged passport. Traveling with Coburn, and with the two "replacement killers" in pursuit, Lee gets pictures from a photo booth and phones Alan, who offers the use of his passport. When Lee arrives at the temple, he discovers that Alan has been tortured to the point of death. Alan tells Lee that his family was moved to Canton —but he told his torturers they were in Shanghai. Lee has little more than 24 hours before his family

1965-602: A gangster ( yakuza ) with tuberculosis , it was also the first time that Kurosawa directed Mifune, who went on to play major roles in all but one of the director's next 16 films (the exception being Ikiru ). While Mifune was not cast as the protagonist in Drunken Angel , his explosive performance as the gangster so dominates the drama that he shifted the focus from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura , who had already appeared in several Kurosawa movies. However, Kurosawa did not want to smother

2096-434: A limo, Lee is just outside. He launches a two-handed handgun assault while Coburn surfaces moments later, driving a truck through the melee, incapacitating Kogan, and later killing him. When Collins fires from a high perch on Lee and Coburn, Lee soon outflanks Collins, killing him from behind. Finally, Lee corners Wei on a fire escape platform. Though both men have emptied their guns, Lee is first to reload. Wei promises Lee that

2227-509: A lucrative sideline lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became famous. In the two years following the release of Horse in 1941, Kurosawa searched for a story he could use to launch his directing career. Towards the end of 1942, about a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , novelist Tsuneo Tomita published his Musashi Miyamoto -inspired judo novel, Sanshiro Sugata , the advertisements for which intrigued Kurosawa. He bought

2358-541: A marine loading dock, LAPD detective Stan Zedkov kills Triad lieutenant Peter Wei. Looking to exact revenge for his son's death, Peter's father, Terence, sends for professional assassin John Lee. Paying off an old debt, Lee has already killed two targets for Wei, who now tells him that this third and final job will settle the obligation . However, Lee's conscience prevents him from completing his final assignment: to assassinate Zedkov's seven-year-old son Stevie before

2489-416: A name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter, moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable. With Heigo's guidance, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances, while exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of

2620-475: A play by Maxim Gorky , taking place in May and June 1957. In contrast to the Shakespearean sweep of Throne of Blood , The Lower Depths was shot on only two confined sets, in order to emphasize the restricted nature of the characters' lives. Though faithful to the play, this adaptation of Russian material to a completely Japanese setting—in this case, the late Edo period —unlike his earlier The Idiot ,

2751-516: A poor farming village in Sengoku period Japan that hires a group of samurai to defend it against an impending attack by bandits, was given a full epic treatment, with a huge cast (largely consisting of veterans of previous Kurosawa productions) and meticulously detailed action, stretching out to almost three-and-a-half hours of screen time. Three months were spent in pre-production and a month in rehearsals. Shooting took up 148 days spread over almost

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2882-418: A real factory during the shoot, eat the factory food and call each other by their character names. He would use similar methods with his performers throughout his career. During production, the actress playing the leader of the factory workers, Yōko Yaguchi , was chosen by her colleagues to present their demands to the director. She and Kurosawa were constantly at odds, and it was through these arguments that

3013-605: A result, began to win festival prizes and commercial release in the West were Kenji Mizoguchi ( The Life of Oharu , Ugetsu , Sansho the Bailiff ) and, somewhat later, Yasujirō Ozu ( Tokyo Story , An Autumn Afternoon )—artists highly respected in Japan but, before this period, almost totally unknown in the West. Kurosawa's growing reputation among Western audiences in the 1950s would make Western audiences more sympathetic to

3144-415: A retreat from the artist's previous commitment to social and political change. The film marked something of an end of an era for its creator. The director himself recognized this at the time of its release, telling critic Donald Richie that a cycle of some kind had just come to an end and that his future films and production methods would be different. His prediction proved quite accurate. Beginning in

3275-409: A rough area, and I had my own version of watching poor people getting pushed down – whoever the person was who had the power, they would come in and take from other people. Fuqua explained how his experience of violence shaped his adolescence, and played a role in his eventual choice of career. My first big break was when I got shot when I was fifteen. It changed my life and it made me not hang out in

3406-482: A samurai clan is portrayed with strongly comic undertones. The film opened on January 1, 1962, quickly surpassing Yojimbo ' s box office success and garnering positive reviews. Kurosawa had meanwhile instructed Toho to purchase the film rights to King's Ransom , a novel about a kidnapping written by American author and screenwriter Evan Hunter , under his pseudonym of Ed McBain, as one of his 87th Precinct series of crime books. The director intended to create

3537-413: A script by Kurosawa's nephew Mike Inoue, is a revenge drama about a young man who is able to infiltrate the hierarchy of a corrupt Japanese company with the intention of exposing the men responsible for his father's death. Its theme proved topical: while the film was in production, the massive Anpo protests were held against the new U.S.–Japan Security treaty , which was seen by many Japanese, particularly

3668-411: A sequel. Kurosawa turned to a script he had written before Yojimbo , reworking it to include the hero of his previous film. Sanjuro was the first of three Kurosawa films to be adapted from the work of the writer Shūgorō Yamamoto (the others would be Red Beard and Dodeskaden ). It is lighter in tone and closer to a conventional period film than Yojimbo , though its story of a power struggle within

3799-406: A slightly less negative domestic response than had been the case with the director's previous film. Abroad, Throne of Blood , regardless of the liberties it takes with its source material, quickly earned a place among the most celebrated Shakespeare adaptations. Another adaptation of a classic European theatrical work followed almost immediately, with production of The Lower Depths , based on

3930-481: A step closer to her goal of making a film in Mandarin and working with a Chinese director. Prior to the start of filming, Sorvino had blown out her voice from screaming in reshoots of Mimic ; Fuqua liked the effect and asked her to keep it, which required Sorvino to yell prior to each day's shoots to burn out her voice. The original motion picture score was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams . Alan Meyerson mixed

4061-738: A subtitled print of the film in Los Angeles, RKO purchased distribution rights to Rashomon in the United States. The company was taking a considerable gamble. It had put out only one prior subtitled film in the American market, and the only previous Japanese talkie commercially released in New York had been Mikio Naruse's comedy, Wife! Be Like a Rose! , in 1937: a critical and box-office flop. However, Rashomon ' s commercial run, greatly helped by strong reviews from critics and even

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4192-407: A work condemning kidnapping, which he considered one of the very worst crimes. The suspense film, titled High and Low , was shot during the latter half of 1962 and released in March 1963. It broke Kurosawa's box office record (the third film in a row to do so), became the highest grossing Japanese film of the year, and won glowing reviews. However, his triumph was somewhat tarnished when, ironically,

4323-724: A year (after five months of pre-production), and wrapped in spring 1965, leaving the director, his crew and his actors exhausted. Red Beard premiered in April 1965, becoming the year's highest-grossing Japanese production and the third (and last) Kurosawa film to top the prestigious Kinema Jumpo yearly critics poll. It remains one of Kurosawa's best-known and most-loved works in his native country. Outside Japan, critics have been much more divided. Most commentators concede its technical merits and some praise it as among Kurosawa's best, while others insist that it lacks complexity and genuine narrative power, with still others claiming that it represents

4454-429: A year, interrupted by production and financing troubles and Kurosawa's health problems. The film finally opened in April 1954, half a year behind its original release date and about three times over budget, making it at the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made. (However, by Hollywood standards, it was a quite modestly budgeted production, even for that time.) The film received positive critical reaction and became

4585-461: Is a period film, set in a mid-nineteenth century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's humanist themes receive perhaps their fullest statement. A conceited and materialistic, foreign-trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide, known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and courage and to perceive

4716-548: Is available as well. During its February 6, 1998, US opening weekend, the film ranked second place, grossing $ 8,046,553 at 1,936 locations. The film Titanic came in first place during that weekend grossing $ 23,027,838. Its revenue dropped by 49% in its second week of release, earning $ 4,068,335. For that particular weekend, the film fell to sixth place still screening in 1,936 theaters. Titanic remained in first place grossing $ 28,167,947 in box office revenue. During its final week in release, The Replacement Killers opened in

4847-493: Is entirely free of surprise. It breaks no rules." He did however muse that "Chow's pretty face and cool presence are inescapable. You don't enjoy this movie, so much as you conduct a road test for the Hong Kong actor. Yes, he can survive in an English language picture!" In The San Francisco Examiner , Walter Addiego perceived that the film "remains a counterfeit of a Woo movie, even though Woo himself co-produced it. He turned

4978-414: Is found. The monk gives Lee his passport before dying in his arms. Holed up in a hotel, Coburn finishes altering Alan's passport for Lee. The two exchange stories, and Coburn becomes sympathetic to Lee. Feeling compelled to stop the killing of Zedkov's son before leaving the country, Lee forces one of Wei's men to reveal the plan, which is to kill Stevie while he and his father are at a movie festival inside

5109-507: Is not at all mine (aside from the fact that we both love the work of Michael Mann, though apparently for very different reasons)." Mira Sorvino said: "I loved working with Antoine, and it was fun to do an action movie. It was kind of like being a kid and playing cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers. And I enjoyed the role of Meg. I thought she was fun to do." Akira Kurosawa Akira Kurosawa ( 黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明 , Kurosawa Akira , March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998)

5240-634: Is otherwise devoid of content". Edward Guthmann in the San Francisco Chronicle said that "As pointless blast-athons go, The Replacement Killers isn't bad. It's beautifully shot by first-time feature director Antoine Fuqua, whose eye for sensual surfaces, deft camera moves and elegant framing was refined with commercials and music videos." Desson Thomson of The Washington Post stated that "Without Chow Yun-Fat, who makes his American screen debut here, there'd be nothing to say about The Replacement Killers . Antoine Fuqua's action movie

5371-482: Is the coolest guy in the world. He was just beautiful. Mira Sorvino was cool. It was fun working with Mira. But the difficult thing was learning the studio system, learning all the things that go along with that system. There are a lot of people that have a lot of say, especially when you're that young in the studio world. You learn that it is a business. I think for me, what I learned was I still love making movies, and I know what I don't want to do. The thing that I learned

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5502-637: Is the safety of a farm in Brazil. Production went much more smoothly than the director's previous film, but a few days before shooting ended, Kurosawa's composer, collaborator, and close friend Fumio Hayasaka died (of tuberculosis) at the age of 41. The film's score was finished by Hayasaka's student, Masaru Sato , who would go on to score all of Kurosawa's next eight films. I Live in Fear opened in November 1955 to mixed reviews and muted audience reaction, becoming

5633-401: Is widely considered to be one of the director's least successful works and the original full-length version no longer exists. Contemporary reviews of the much shortened edited version were very negative, but the film was a moderate success at the box office, largely because of the popularity of one of its stars, Setsuko Hara. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kurosawa, Rashomon had been entered in

5764-586: The Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement . Posthumously, he was named " Asian of the Century " in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN , cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media. Kurosawa

5895-579: The BBC in September 2014 whether he believes in God, Fuqua said: "Absolutely." Executive producer only The Replacement Killers The film was a co-production between the motion picture studios of Columbia Pictures , Brillstein-Grey Entertainment , and WCG Entertainment Productions. The Replacement Killers explores assassination, violence and the influence of triads in modern society. The film score

6026-597: The Venice Film Festival , due to the efforts of Giuliana Stramigioli , a Japan-based representative of an Italian film company, who had seen and admired the movie and convinced Daiei to submit it. On September 10, 1951, Rashomon was awarded the festival's highest prize, the Golden Lion , shocking not only Daiei but the international film world, which at the time was largely unaware of Japan's decades-old cinematic tradition. After Daiei briefly exhibited

6157-636: The Western , while at the same time offering an unprecedentedly (for the Japanese screen) graphic portrayal of violence. Some commentators have seen the Sanjuro character in this film as a fantasy figure who magically reverses the historical triumph of the corrupt merchant class over the samurai class. Featuring Tatsuya Nakadai in his first major role in a Kurosawa movie, and with innovative photography by Kazuo Miyagawa (who shot Rashomon ) and Takao Saito ,

6288-487: The 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963) and Red Beard (1965). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim. In 1990, he accepted

6419-586: The 2022 Hulu documentary series Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers , for which he won the Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary Series . Fuqua was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to African American parents Carlos and Mary Fuqua. He graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1983. Before turning to filmmaking and music videos, Fuqua studied electrical engineering, with

6550-700: The DVD included scene selections, the "Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood" featurette, and the HBO special "Where the Action is". A VHS format edition was released on March 30, 1999. On March 5, 2002, a Special Edition DVD was released. Features included digitally mastered audio and anamorphic video, widescreen presentation, audio in English 5.1 (Dolby Digital), Spanish, French, Portuguese, subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai, director's commentary,

6681-721: The HBO making-of "Where the Action Is", deleted scenes, alternate ending, the "Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood" featurette, theatrical trailers, filmographies, animated menus, and scene selections with motion images. A UMD version of the film for the Sony PlayStation Portable was released on August 9, 2005. The disc features DVD quality picture, languages in Chinese, English, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai, and viewing options for color and black and white. An extended-cut DVD adding approximately 10 minutes to

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6812-552: The Pacific were causing radioactive rainstorms in Japan and one particular incident in March had exposed a Japanese fishing boat to nuclear fallout , with disastrous results. It is in this anxious atmosphere that Kurosawa's next film, I Live in Fear , was conceived. The story concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshiro Mifune) so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family (both legal and extra-marital) to what he imagines

6943-554: The Sun (2003), King Arthur (2004), Shooter (2007), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), Southpaw (2015), The Magnificent Seven (2016) and The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023), earning with the first one the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture . He also directed the critically acclaimed documentaries American Dream/American Knightmare (2018), What's My Name: Muhammad Ali (2019), and

7074-505: The Tiger's Tail , based on the Kabuki play Kanjinchō and starring the comedian Enoken, with whom Kurosawa had often worked during his assistant director days, was completed in September 1945. By this time, Japan had surrendered and the occupation of Japan had begun. The new American censors interpreted the values allegedly promoted in the picture as overly "feudal" and banned the work. It

7205-468: The action comedy Bait (2000) starring Jamie Foxx . He then directed the crime thriller Training Day (2001), for which star Denzel Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor . His next films were the action war drama Tears of the Sun (2003), the Arthurian legend film King Arthur (2004), the conspiracy action thriller Shooter (2007), the crime film Brooklyn's Finest (2009), and

7336-442: The action thrillers Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and The Equalizer (2014), the latter of which again pairs Fuqua with Denzel Washington. In 2011, he directed CIA procedural Fox pilot Exit Strategy starring Ethan Hawke . He co-created the comic-book miniseries After Dark with Wesley Snipes , which was written by Peter Milligan and illustrated by Jeff Nentrup. He was slated to direct Tupac Shakur 's official biopic but

7467-576: The aim was to design a " Taxi Driver for the 1990s". In addition to physical training, Mira Sorvino, who had never handled a gun prior to this film, took weapons training to prepare for her role. Sorvino, who majored in Asian studies at Harvard , speaks Mandarin , and lived for eight months (1988–89) in Beijing , where she studied Chinese, taught English, and saw Chinese films, including Hong Kong action films. She felt The Replacement Killers brought her

7598-559: The average score is 5.3 out of 10. The consensus summarizes: "Chow Yun-fat makes his dubious English-language debut in The Replacement Killers , a stylish but muddled knockoff of the Hong Kong shoot-em-ups that earned the star his international renown." At Metacritic , which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, the film received a score of 42 based on 22 reviews, which it classifies as "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave

7729-458: The best Japanese film ever made. In the most recent (2022) version of the widely respected British Film Institute (BFI) Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, Seven Samurai placed 20th among all films from all countries in the critics' and tied at 14th in the directors' polls, receiving a place in the Top Ten lists of 48 critics and 22 directors. In 1954, nuclear tests in

7860-567: The book on its publication day, devoured it in one sitting, and immediately asked Toho to secure the film rights. Kurosawa's initial instinct proved correct as, within a few days, three other major Japanese studios also offered to buy the rights. Toho prevailed, and Kurosawa began pre-production on his debut work as director. Shooting of Sanshiro Sugata began on location in Yokohama in December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting

7991-421: The boy and Lee's family will still die, but Lee replies, "Not in your lifetime", and kills him. Though Zedkov arrives before Lee and Coburn can get away, he lets them go, taking only their guns. Coburn reluctantly bids goodbye to Lee at the airport , presenting him with one last gift, passports for his mother and sister. Production for the film began on February 10, 1997, in downtown Los Angeles. The first shoot

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8122-516: The bureaucratic world of its hero and the U.S. cultural colonization of Japan. (American pop songs figure prominently in the film.) Because of this strategy, the filmmakers are usually credited with saving the picture from the kind of sentimentality common to dramas about characters with terminal illnesses. Ikiru opened in October 1952 to rave reviews—it won Kurosawa his second Kinema Junpo "Best Film" award—and enormous box office success. It remains

8253-494: The chapter of Something Like an Autobiography that describes it—written nearly half a century after the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell". Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters. In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became

8384-467: The closeness of the two men on the set, "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body." Donald Richie has described the rapport between them as a unique "symbiosis". When Kurosawa's exclusive contract with Toho came to an end in 1966, the 56-year-old director was seriously contemplating change. Observing the troubled state of the domestic film industry, and having already received dozens of offers from abroad,

8515-492: The columnist Ed Sullivan , earned $ 35,000 in its first three weeks at a single New York theatre, an almost unheard-of sum at the time. This success in turn led to a vogue in America and the West for Japanese movies throughout the 1950s, replacing the enthusiasm for Italian neorealist cinema. By the end of 1952 Rashomon was released in Japan, the United States, and most of Europe. Among the Japanese film-makers whose work, as

8646-407: The completed film past the censors was an entirely different matter. The censorship office considered the work to be objectionably "British-American" by the standards of wartime Japan, and it was only through the intervention of director Yasujirō Ozu , who championed the film, that Sanshiro Sugata was finally accepted for release on March 25, 1943. (Kurosawa had just turned 33.) The movie became both

8777-497: The completion of Drunken Angel , Toho became embroiled in a months-long labor strike , in which the Toho union occupied the grounds of the studio. When Toho management ceased paying workers' salaries, Kurosawa formed a touring acting troupe to raise funds, directing Anton Chekhov 's The Proposal , and an adaptation of Drunken Angel starring Mifune and Shimura. Disillusioned by the division and violence between employees at Toho,

8908-460: The conventional Kurosawan hero to combat a social evil that cannot be resolved through the actions of individuals, however courageous or cunning. Yojimbo ( The Bodyguard ), Kurosawa Production's second film, centers on a masterless samurai, Sanjuro, who strolls into a 19th-century town ruled by two opposing violent factions and provokes them into destroying each other. The director used this work to play with many genre conventions, particularly

9039-487: The detective's eyes. Realizing that his actions will result in retaliation against his mother and sister, Lee prepares to return to China , enlisting the help of old friend Alan Chan, a monk in a local Buddhist temple, to make arrangements to have his family moved to a secure location. Infuriated by Lee's disobedience, Wei orders his head lieutenant, Michael Kogan, to lead the hunt for Lee, and has his people in China begin

9170-400: The directing chores over to first-timer Antoine Fuqua, whose previous work was limited to music videos and commercials, and it shows." He added, "The script, by Ken Sanzel, is the work of someone who's seen Woo's movies and wasn't particularly moved by the experience." In retrospect, Antoine Fuqua said: " The Replacement Killers was a good and bad experience. It was great because Chow Yun-Fat

9301-484: The director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work. Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost high school , he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign literature. In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films and quickly made

9432-523: The film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Among some of the positive critiques, Roger Ebert writing in the Chicago Sun-Times called it "as abstract as a jazz instrumental, and as cool and self-assured". Discussing the film's style, he remarked that it was a "high-gloss version of a Hong Kong action picture, made in America but observing the exuberance of a genre where surfaces are everything". In Variety , Leonard Klady viewed

9563-496: The film as being a "big, loud music video that's not particularly interested in content. It's a rudderless style piece; as the old saw cautions, accept no substitutes." Regarding the film's set design and production qualities, he noted that, "while an apt homage, the set pieces here are technical but not visceral, feeling manufactured rather than organically integrated into the plot". Russell Smith of The Austin Chronicle said

9694-399: The film industry (which includes his five years as assistant director), he had directed twenty-three films, while during the remaining twenty-eight years, for many complex reasons, he would complete only seven more. Also, for reasons never adequately explained, Red Beard would be his final film starring Toshiro Mifune. Yū Fujiki , an actor who worked on The Lower Depths , observed, regarding

9825-442: The film is considered one of Kurosawa's most lightweight efforts, though it remains popular, not least because it is one of several major influences on George Lucas 's 1977 space opera , Star Wars . Starting with Rashomon , Kurosawa's productions had become increasingly large in scope and so had the director's budgets. Toho, concerned about this development, suggested that he might help finance his own works, therefore making

9956-465: The film premiered in April 1961 and was a critically and commercially successful venture, earning more than any previous Kurosawa film. The movie and its blackly comic tone were also widely imitated abroad. Sergio Leone 's A Fistful of Dollars was a virtual (unauthorized) scene-by-scene remake with Toho filing a lawsuit on Kurosawa's behalf and prevailing. Following the success of Yojimbo , Kurosawa found himself under pressure from Toho to create

10087-410: The film was "so numbingly ritualistic that even the well-choreographed gun battles, probably the most Woo-like aspects of the film, lose much of their potential impact". Writing for The New York Times , Stephen Holden noted that although the film's "seamless fusion of Hong Kong action-adventure style and cool, Los Angeles street chic has a certain seductive charm, it is the only charm of a movie that

10218-466: The film was blamed for a wave of kidnappings which occurred in Japan about this time (he himself received kidnapping threats directed at his young daughter, Kazuko). High and Low is considered by many commentators to be among the director's strongest works. Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, Red Beard . Based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and Injured , it

10349-463: The film was released on April 25, 2006. Special features included the "Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood" featurette, digitally remastered picture and sound, and the edited HBO special "Where the Action Is". The widescreen hi-definition Blu-ray version of the film was released on September 11, 2007. Special features included HBO's making-of "Where the Action Is" and the "Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood" featurette. A supplemental Video on demand viewing option

10480-468: The film's title into a postwar catchphrase . His next film, One Wonderful Sunday , premiered in July 1947 to mixed reviews. It is a relatively uncomplicated and sentimental love story dealing with an impoverished postwar couple trying to enjoy, within the devastation of postwar Tokyo, their one weekly day off. The movie bears the influence of Frank Capra , D. W. Griffith and F. W. Murnau , each of whom

10611-494: The finished product as dramatically unfocused and unsatisfactory, and almost all critics agree. However, it would be Kurosawa's second film of 1950 that would ultimately win him, and Japanese cinema, a whole new international audience. After finishing Scandal , Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios to make another film for them. Kurosawa picked a script by an aspiring young screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto , who would eventually work on nine of his films. Their first joint effort

10742-486: The first Kurosawa film to lose money during its original theatrical run. Today, it is considered by many to be among the finest films dealing with the psychological effects of the global nuclear stalemate. Kurosawa's next project, Throne of Blood , an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Macbeth —set, like Seven Samurai , in the Sengoku Era—represented an ambitious transposition of the English work into

10873-454: The future director of Godzilla . The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres. Scandal , released by Shochiku in April 1950, was inspired by the director's personal experiences with, and anger towards, Japanese yellow journalism . The work is an ambitious mixture of courtroom drama and social problem film about free speech and personal responsibility, but even Kurosawa regarded

11004-412: The heroic central character is a woman, Yukie ( Setsuko Hara ), who, born into upper-middle-class privilege, comes to question her values in a time of political crisis. The original script had to be extensively rewritten and, because of its controversial theme and gender of its protagonist, the completed work divided critics. Nevertheless, it managed to win the approval of audiences, who turned variations on

11135-432: The hope of going on to fly jets in the military. Fuqua pays tribute to screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto , a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa 's, saying his writing "affected a boy from Pittsburgh living in the ghetto." [Shinobu Hashimoto's writing] was so beautiful and poetic and powerful and heartbreaking. It was all about justice, it was all about sacrifice, and it made me want to be one of those guys. I came from

11266-412: The idea of working outside Japan appealed to him as never before. For his first foreign project, Kurosawa chose a story based on a Life magazine article. The Embassy Pictures action thriller, to be filmed in English and called simply Runaway Train , would have been his first in color. But the language barrier proved a major problem, and the English version of the screenplay was not even finished by

11397-474: The irony was people thought I was the new French film director. No one had any idea I was this guy from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I used to walk in the room and people would literally ask me to get coffee. And I would say, "No, no, I'm the director", and I loved watching their faces. That was fun. From 1998 onwards, Fuqua began working primarily as a feature film director. In a tribute article for Time magazine, Fuqua expressed his early respect for Kurosawa as

11528-639: The last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director for Yamamoto, Horse (1941), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as his mentor was occupied with the shooting of another film. Yamamoto advised Kurosawa that a good director needed to master screenwriting. Kurosawa soon realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher than what he was paid as an assistant director. He later wrote or co-wrote all his films, and frequently penned screenplays for other directors such as Satsuo Yamamoto 's film, A Triumph of Wings ( Tsubasa no gaika , 1942). This outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as

11659-403: The late 1950s, television began increasingly to dominate the leisure time of the formerly large and loyal Japanese cinema audience. And as film company revenues dropped, so did their appetite for risk—particularly the risk represented by Kurosawa's costly production methods. Red Beard also marked the midway point, chronologically, in the artist's career. During his previous twenty-nine years in

11790-629: The lead role of Sam Chisolm. In early 2018, Fuqua worked as one of the executive producers on the Fox medical drama series The Resident . In the summer of 2018, his thriller sequel The Equalizer 2 (2018) was released with Denzel Washington returning in the main role. In June 2021, Fuqua's sci-fi film Infinite , starring Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor was released. In 2021, Fuqua and actor Will Smith announced that their upcoming film, Emancipation , would not be filmed in Georgia because of

11921-419: The major studio Toho ), advertised for assistant directors. Although he had demonstrated no previous interest in film as a profession, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films and find ways to overcome them. His half-mocking view was that if the deficiencies were fundamental, there was no way to correct them. Kurosawa's essay earned him

12052-420: The most acclaimed of all the artist's films set in the modern era. In December 1952, Kurosawa took his Ikiru screenwriters, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, for a forty-five-day secluded residence at an inn to create the screenplay for his next movie, Seven Samurai . The ensemble work was Kurosawa's first proper samurai film , the genre for which he would become most famous. The simple story, about

12183-528: The most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. Rashomon (1950), which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival . The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout

12314-425: The most out of that movie was what I don't want to do." Ken Sanzel, who wrote the movie, said: "The script bears very little resemblance to anything I would have written; only the bare bones of the plot really survived. I think that Chow Yun-Fat was incredible, but for me the movie was a series of otherwise bad decisions. I'm glad that people enjoy it, but it was really Antoine Fuqua's sensibility top to bottom, which

12445-460: The movie stars Takashi Shimura as a cancer-ridden Tokyo bureaucrat, Watanabe, on a final quest for meaning before his death. For the screenplay, Kurosawa brought in Hashimoto as well as writer Hideo Oguni , who would go on to co-write twelve Kurosawa films. Despite the work's grim subject matter, the screenwriters took a satirical approach, which some have compared to the work of Brecht , to both

12576-457: The name of Caravaggio . Fuqua began his career directing music videos for popular artists such as Toni Braxton , Stevie Wonder , and Prince . He directed Michelle Pfeiffer in the video Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio which was used to promote Jerry Bruckheimer's successful film Dangerous Minds . The movie became a big hit and Jerry Bruckheimer was kind enough to give me a lot of credit for it because they used my music video ...

12707-458: The new widescreen format that had been gaining popularity in Japan. The resulting film, The Hidden Fortress , is an action-adventure comedy-drama about a medieval princess, her loyal general, and two peasants who all need to travel through enemy lines in order to reach their home region. Released in December 1958, The Hidden Fortress became an enormous box-office success in Japan and was warmly received by critics both in Japan and abroad. Today,

12838-407: The patients at the clinic, whom he at first despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity. Yūzō Kayama , who plays Yasumoto, was an extremely popular film and music star at the time, particularly for his "Young Guy" ( Wakadaishō ) series of musical comedies, so signing him to appear in the film virtually guaranteed Kurosawa strong box-office. The shoot, the filmmaker's longest ever, lasted well over

12969-557: The police, unsuccessfully interrogated by Zedkov, and released as bait so the detective can see who tries to kill her. Meanwhile, Wei hires two skilled out-of-town contract killers named Ryker and Collins to take over the hunt for Lee and the Zedkov contract. Lee finds Coburn when she returns to her destroyed office. Having been made aware that the Triads are involved, Coburn wants out, but Lee forces her to finish her original task of creating

13100-416: The popular actor Ken'ichi Enomoto , known as "Enoken". Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year. Kurosawa's responsibilities increased, and he worked at tasks ranging from stage construction and film development to location scouting, script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, editing, and second-unit directing. In

13231-452: The primeval forest of Nara , wrapped on August 17. Just one week was spent in hurried post-production, hampered by a studio fire, and the finished film premiered at Tokyo's Imperial Theatre on August 25, expanding nationwide the following day. The movie was met by lukewarm reviews, with many critics puzzled by its unique theme and treatment, but it was nevertheless a moderate financial success for Daiei. Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku,

13362-415: The project was postponed to allow Fuqua to direct rapper Eminem 's second feature film, Southpaw (2015). Eminem later left Southpaw to focus on his music, and was replaced with Jake Gyllenhaal . Fuqua's 2016 film, The Magnificent Seven , was a remake of the classic 1960 Western of the same name which itself was an American remake of Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai . Denzel Washington plays

13493-418: The proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting. With the increasing production of talking pictures in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo died by suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death and

13624-577: The recent passage of Georgia's new voting law . Smith and Fuqua released a joint statement: "We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access". On December 3, 2021, he signed a first look deal with Netflix and renamed his production company from Fuqua Films to Hill District Media. He later signed an overall television deal with Paramount Television Studios and MTV Entertainment Studios . In January 2023, Fuqua announced his next film project would be Michael ,

13755-465: The reception of later generations of Japanese film-makers ranging from Kon Ichikawa , Masaki Kobayashi , Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to Juzo Itami , Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike . His career boosted by his sudden international fame, Kurosawa, now reunited with his original film studio, Toho (which would go on to produce his next 11 films), set to work on his next project, Ikiru . Based on Leo Tolstoy 's The Death of Ivan Ilyich ,

13886-451: The search for Lee's family. No longer able to use the Triad network to get out of the country, Lee searches for alternative means outside Wei's sphere of influence, and looks to skilled forger Meg Coburn for a new passport . Before she can finish the job, Wei's men storm Meg's office, destroying the computerized tools of her trade in the ensuing shootout. Lee escapes; Coburn is picked up by

14017-544: The sound elements for the chorus, while Richard Whitfield edited the film's music. The soundtrack for the film was released on March 10, 1998, by the Varèse Sarabande music label. In an interview with Hideo Kojima , he stated it was the film's soundtrack that led him to hire Harry to work on the soundtrack of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty . In addition to the film score by Harry Gregson-Williams, several modern songs by cutting-edge artists were included on

14148-459: The soundtrack (although never officially released as a cd) including: The Replacement Killers premiered in cinemas on February 6, 1998, in wide release throughout the US, and had a five-week theatrical run. Following its cinematic release in theaters, The Replacement Killers was released on DVD and VHS by Columbia TriStar Home Video in the United States on July 1, 1998. Special features for

14279-447: The streets as much, and go to the movies more. Those sort of things are wake up calls to have a better appreciation for life, and a better appreciation for the people around you. From that moment in my life I put all my energy into what I believed in, and at that time it was playing basketball and sports. That led me to a scholarship ... after that a professor said that I should take an art class ... I fell in love with an artist by

14410-503: The studio's potential losses smaller, while in turn allowing himself more artistic freedom as co-producer. Kurosawa agreed, and the Kurosawa Production Company was established in April 1959, with Toho as the majority shareholder. Despite risking his own money, Kurosawa chose a story that was more directly critical of the Japanese business and political elites than any previous work. The Bad Sleep Well , based on

14541-488: The style of a favorite writer of his, Georges Simenon , it was the director's first collaboration with screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima , who would later help to script eight other Kurosawa films. A famous, virtually wordless sequence, lasting over eight minutes, shows the detective, disguised as an impoverished veteran, wandering the streets in search of the gun thief; it employed actual documentary footage of war-ravaged Tokyo neighborhoods shot by Kurosawa's friend, Ishirō Honda ,

14672-403: The subsequent Kantō Massacre of 1923, Heigo took the thirteen-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When Akira wanted to look away from the corpses of humans and animals scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, encouraging Akira instead to face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as

14803-399: The time of his birth and one deceased, leaving Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother. In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to Western traditions and considered theatre and motion pictures to have educational merit. He encouraged his children to watch films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six. An important formative influence

14934-419: The two paradoxically became close. They married on May 21, 1945, with Yaguchi two months pregnant (she never resumed her acting career), and the couple would remain together until her death in 1985. They had two children, both surviving Kurosawa as of 2018 : a son, Hisao, born December 20, 1945, who served as producer on some of his father's last projects, and Kazuko , a daughter, born April 29, 1954, who became

15065-564: The underhanded tactics of Toho leadership, and the breaking of the occupation by police and military standoff , Kurosawa left Toho, later recalling "I had come to understand that the studio I had thought was my home actually belonged to strangers". Kurosawa, with producer Sōjirō Motoki and fellow directors and friends Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio Naruse and Senkichi Taniguchi, formed a new independent production unit called Film Art Association (Eiga Geijutsu Kyōkai). For this organization's debut work, and first film for Daiei studios , Kurosawa turned to

15196-527: The war, Kurosawa, influenced by the democratic ideals of the Occupation, sought to make films that would establish a new respect towards the individual and the self . The first such film, No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), inspired by both the 1933 Takigawa incident and the Hotsumi Ozaki wartime spy case, criticized Japan's prewar regime for its political oppression. Atypically for the director,

15327-420: The young actor's immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando 's defiant stance would startle American film audiences a few years later. The film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was chosen by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics poll as the best film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa movies to be so honored. After

15458-423: The young man greatly impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of the other judges. Drunken Angel is often considered the director's first major work. Although the script, like all of Kurosawa's occupation-era works, had to go through rewrites due to American censorship, Kurosawa felt that this was the first film in which he was able to express himself freely. A gritty story of a doctor who tries to save

15589-480: The young, as threatening the country's democracy by giving too much power to corporations and politicians. The film opened in September 1960 to positive critical reaction and modest box office success. The 25-minute opening sequence depicting a corporate wedding reception is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's most skillfully executed set pieces, but the remainder of the film is often perceived as disappointing by comparison. The movie has also been criticized for employing

15720-413: Was Stray Dog . It is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre) that explores the mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery through the story of a young detective, played by Mifune, and his fixation on the recovery of his handgun, which was stolen by a penniless war veteran who proceeds to use it to rob and murder. Adapted from an unpublished novel by Kurosawa in

15851-452: Was The Idiot , an adaptation of the novel by the director's favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky . The story is relocated from Russia to Hokkaido , but otherwise adheres closely to the original, a fact seen by many critics as detrimental to the work. A studio-mandated edit shortened it from Kurosawa's original cut of 265 minutes to just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative exceedingly difficult to follow. The severely edited film version

15982-419: Was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema . Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style , strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production . Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following

16113-400: Was among Kurosawa's favorite directors. Another film released in 1947 with Kurosawa's involvement was the action-adventure thriller, Snow Trail , directed by Senkichi Taniguchi from Kurosawa's screenplay. It marked the debut of the intense young actor Toshiro Mifune . It was Kurosawa who, with his mentor Yamamoto, had intervened to persuade Toho to sign Mifune, during an audition in which

16244-469: Was based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 's experimental short story " In a Grove ", which recounts the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife from various different and conflicting points of view. Kurosawa saw potential in the script, and with Hashimoto's help, polished and expanded it and then pitched it to Daiei, who were happy to accept the project due to its low budget. The shooting of Rashomon began on July 7, 1950, and, after extensive location work in

16375-561: Was born on March 23, 1910, in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu (1864–1948), a member of a samurai family from Akita Prefecture , worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school , while his mother Shima (1870–1952) came from a merchant's family living in Osaka . Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy family, with two of his siblings already grown up at

16506-535: Was created for the night-time finale, where Yun-Fat shot off 546 rounds of two-fisted shooting; the repetitive action left his hands blistered and shaking. More gunplay took place in a video arcade replicated at the original Lawry's California Center (now the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens ), just north of downtown Los Angeles. Lee's tranquil Buddhist temple was fashioned under this same roof. Director Antoine Fuqua stressed to his team that

16637-483: Was his elementary school teacher Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general. During this time, Akira also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship. Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa (1906–1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake and

16768-409: Was not released until 1952, the year another Kurosawa film, Ikiru , was also released. Ironically, while in production, the film had already been savaged by Japanese wartime censors as too Western and "democratic" (they particularly disliked the comic porter played by Enoken), so the movie most probably would not have seen the light of day even if the war had continued beyond its completion. After

16899-539: Was orchestrated by Harry Gregson-Williams ; the soundtrack was released by the Varèse Sarabande music label on March 10, 1998. The Replacement Killers premiered in theaters nationwide in the United States on February 6, 1998, grossing $ 19.2 million in US ticket receipts and $ 39.5 million worldwide from a $ 30 million budget. It has a 38% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a consensus of "mixed reviews" on Metacritic . During an orchestrated drug bust at

17030-456: Was regarded as artistically successful. The film premiered in September 1957, receiving a mixed response similar to that of Throne of Blood . However, some critics rank it among the director's most underrated works. Kurosawa's three next movies after Seven Samurai had not managed to capture Japanese audiences in the way that that film had. The mood of the director's work had been growing increasingly pessimistic and dark even as Japan entered

17161-502: Was set in the historic Mayan Theater , refurbished as a trendy nightclub and cast with hundreds of extras for the film's opening scene. The eight-story, nearly condemned Giant Penny building in the middle of Los Angeles served as the location for a police station interior, a hotel room, and Meg Coburn's office. A chaotic gunfight was filmed amid the spray, brushes, and hoses of Joe's Car Wash, also in Los Angeles. A Chinatown-like streetscape of damp, narrow alleys and blinking red neon lights

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