Review of Seven Samurai (1954) by Stuart K — 30 Apr 2014

Written and directed by Akira Kurosawa, who had become renowned in his native Japan for films such as Sanshiro Sugata (1945) and Rashomon (1950), the latter had been the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at Venice that year.

With his international reputation on the rise, Kurosawa started work on a next film which took a year to shoot and nearly bankrupted the producers, but it succeeded. Set sometime in the 1500's, when Japan was divided into warring states, a group of bandits going around raiding villages.

They come to one village, but their leader (Shinpei Takagi) decides to spare them until the harvest. Now worried for their lives, including farmer Manz? (Kamatari Fujiwara) and miller Gisaku (Kokuten Kodo) decide to employ seven masterless samurai to protect them.

The samurai include Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), Shimada (Takashi Shimura), Okamoto (Isao Kimura), Katayama (Yoshio Inaba), Ky?z? (Seiji Miyaguchi), Hayashida (Minoru Chiaki) and Shichir?ji (Daisuke Kat?), who all agree to help the villagers, but they have to adapt to their life first.

It's a very simple plot, but it's spread over 3 hours, although it didn't need to be that long, and it's had loads of different versions. But within this film you can see the template and blueprints for how action films would be made in the years to come.

It's not the classic people have made it out to be, but it's got some good moments.