Drunken Angel (1948)

IMDb plot summary: A drunken doctor with a hot temper and a violence-prone gangster with tuberculosis form a quicksilver bond.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Stars Takashi Shimura, Toshirō Mifune, and Reizaburō Yamamoto.

Drunken Angel is an early Akira Kurosawa film starring Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor and Toshiro Mifune as the young reckless yakuza diagnosed with tuberculosis. The two form a begrudging bond as their self-destructive tendencies threaten to end them both. This definitely has a lot of Kurosawa hallmarks, including of course two of his favorite actors, and although it feels a little raw in its execution, overall it works very well. Our two leads are, unsurprisingly, extremely charismatic, and it's worth it just to watch the two of them go back and forth with their disparate worldviews. It definitely leans into an older style of acting, the kind I expect to see in a lot of older films, and one that is refreshingly absent in Kurosawa's later, more realism-based work. There are a few moments that are a little slower or more didactic than Kurosawa's later works, but it's still well worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of his to begin with.

🎥 Drunken Angel (1948)

📊 Ranked #579/4223 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

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