A veteran samurai (Takashi Shimura) answers a village’s request for protection from marauding bandits who return yearly to rape, kill and steal. He assembles a team of six other samurai, and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves.
When forty bandits attack the village, a fight to the death ensues.
Although set in 16th-century Japan, The Seven Samurai, as director Akira Kurosawa readily acknowledged, was heavily indebted to Hollywood Westerns, particularly to John Ford.
From its opening shot of galloping horsemen silhouetted against the horizon to its story of an elite team of warriors being assembled to protect a threatened village, the film was innovative with its influences – it would eventually be remade by John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven(1960).
The film takes time – a leisurely 207 minutes – establishing the individual characters of the samurai team and detailing their ambiguous relationships with the villagers they are hired to protect.
It builds steadily to the magnificent climactic rain-drenched battle scene, which is rendered in an orgy of chaotic, kinetic action, all slashing limbs and splashing mud.
Kurosawa’s genius for pictorial composition and choreographed movement made The Seven Samurai a perfect example of epic bravura filmmaking.
Supergrass, The (1985) In this so-so comedy spin-off from the Comic Strip Presents TV series set in the West Country, Dennis Carter (Ade…
Carmen Jones (1954) The legendarily beautiful and troubled African-American actress Dorothy Dandridge (pictured), like so many sex symbols, was a martyr to her…
Sister Act (1992) Ghost (1990) may have won Whoopi Goldberg an Oscar, but it was this comedy (directed by Emile Ardolino of Dirty Dancing…
Star 80 (1983) The true story of Canadian Playboy playmate-turned-Hollywood actress Dorothy Stratten who was on the verge of stardom (having just starred…
Silver Lode (1954) In this gripping Western, John Payne stars as Dan Ballard, a respected and well-liked rancher in the small town where…
Star Wars (1977) When 33-year-old director George Lucas gave the world Star Wars he could not have envisioned how many nerdy and geeky boys he…
Seven Guns for the MacGregors (1966) This Italian-Spanish Spaghetti Western told the story of Scottish immigrants Alastair MacGregor (George Rigaud) and Harold MacGregor (Francesco Tensi, billed…
Singer Not the Song, The (1961) The Singer Not The Song is set during the 1950s in a small isolated Mexican village. Local Roman Catholic priest Father…
The film takes time – a leisurely 207 minutes – establishing the individual characters of the samurai team and detailing their ambiguous relationships with the villagers they are hired to protect.
