The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) poster & wallpaper

Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba

Unanimously hailed as one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of the motion picture, Seven Samurai has inspired countless films modeled after its basic premise. But Akira Kurosawa's cla...( read more  read more... )ssic 1954 action drama has never been surpassed in terms of sheer power of emotion, kinetic energy, and dynamic character development. The story is set in the 1600s, when the residents of a small Japanese village are seeking protection against repeated attacks by a band of marauding thieves. Offering mere handfuls of rice as payment, they hire seven unemployed "ronin" (masterless samurai), including a boastful swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) who is actually a farmer's son desperately seeking glory and acceptance. The samurai get acquainted with but remain distant from the villagers, knowing that their assignment may prove to be fatal. The climactic battle with the raiding thieves remains one of the most breathtaking sequences ever filmed. It's poetry in hyperactive motion and one of Kurosawa's crowning cinematic achievements. This is not a film that can be well served by any synopsis; it must be seen to be appreciated (accept nothing less than its complete 203-minute version) and belongs on the short list of any definitive home-video library. --Jeff Shannon

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97% liked it

64,779 ratings

Unrated, 208 min.

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

Release Date: April 26, 1954

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DVD Release Date: March 1, 1999

Stats: 6,458 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (6,458)

  • PvtCaboose91
    October 1, 2009
    PvtCaboose91
    "This is the nature of war. By protecting others, you save yourselves."


    In the hands of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, a simple tale of seven samurai hired to protect a village from marauding bandits is transformed into a unique and mesmerising action epic of sust

    ...( read more)ained tension and stoic humanity.


    Full review coming soon...
  • jplong39
    June 11, 2009
    jplong39
    The greatest of all action adventure films ever...pioneering in film technique, epic in scale, and intimate in detail. VASTLY superior to the shallow remake The Magnificent Seven. I've seen Seven Samurai at least 30 times, and the 3 1/2 hour length seems like it gets shorter with...( read more) every viewing.
  • hypathio7
    May 14, 2009
    hypathio7
    I just saw a restored print of this on the big screen with newly translated subtitles. I had forgotten how long it was (with an intermission). It is more about slowly revealing the characters and saving the big action sequences for the end. I really enjoy the outdoor setting a...( read more)s well. I think I've mentioned it in other reviews, but there is something so beautiful about the forest. The hills surrounding the small village are magnificently captured, the wind blows, the dust is stirred up, and when it rains, the mud replaces the splatter of blood. The movie starts with a lot of slow steady drum beats for accompaniment and culminates with the rapid patter of sandaled feet and pounding hooves of the attacking bandits' horses.

    The story takes its time as four peasants led by Rikichi (Tsuchiya) go to town to enlist the help of samurai for the defense of their village. Samurai are born into privilege, can read and write and enjoy leisurely arts, and are generally proud of their social standing and skill. They finally find the good-hearted and intelligent Kambei (Shimura). Two other samurai are watching Kambei too. Katsushiro (Kimura) is a young man who immediately has great respect for Kambei and requests to be his disciple. Kikuchiyo (Mifune) is boisterous and intrigued by the more clever man, but expects Kambei to give him respect and acceptance automatically. The other samurai are gathered once Kambei agrees to the peasants' proposal. Toshiro Mifune is such a treat when he appears again drunk, trying to claim upperclass lineage, and wildly trying to prove some skill to the other six who only laugh. Toshiro's performance might seem over done, he's such a ham. I couldn't accept his wildly different style when I first saw this movie, but I grew to love him. Having seen him in some others pictures by now, I was totally with him during this viewing. He adds much needed humor. The story continues slowly as Kambei leads a careful defense plan to protect the four sides of the village. Meanwhile, the villagers "piss and cry" at every little thing and try to learn from the samurai how to use spears to defend themselves. Katsushiro has a romantic subplot with Shino, one of the peasants' daughters. Backstories are revealed about a couple of the other peasants and about where Kikuchiyo came from. Finally the bandits attack! And Kambei methodically checks off the chart on his map as they lessen the bandits' numbers. It's a very controlled, but impressive, and close battle as the villagers fight for their lives with the strategic leadership of the samurai.
  • her69eyes
    March 2, 2009
    her69eyes
    "Seven Samurai" is the film that can be credited as the inspiration for many 20th century heroic epics, most notably "Star Wars". It's often thought that Kurosawa's masterpiece was the first film that involved a group of men banding together to face a larger foe, such as the asse...( read more)mbling of Han Solo, Chewbacca, C3PO, etc. in George Lucas' interpretation of the tale. For a Japanese samurai film, "Seven Samurai" is peculiarly western in content - a film that truly transcends cultural barriers. Now, almost 60 years after it's release, it remains more captivating and memorable than just about any modern epic.

    The film takes place in a Japanese farming community in the 16th century. The farmers, lead by Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya), have frequently been harassed by a group of pillaging robbers. Now, knowing that the bandits are going to make their way back to the community sooner than later, the farmers hire the services of seven samurai, with only food and shelter to offer in return.

    The samurai are introduced one by one and Kurosawa devotes time to establish each of their unique personalities. Upon the first viewing, three will stick out: Kambei (Takashi Shimura), the "wise" one, Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), a charismatic drunk baffoon, and Katsushiro (Isao Kimura), the new and untested samurai. Kambei shines in his scenes planning out the battle - defensive strategies that involve building a barrier to stop the horses and flooding the rice patties. Kikuchiyo stumbles around as a joke for the first half of the film, but eventually his accomplices and the townspeople come to respect him. In the last battle of the film, when the outnumbered Kikuchiyo fends off bandits in the rain, it feels like the making of a film icon. Katsushiro differentiates himself mostly through a relationship with a local girl, Shino (Keiko Tsushima). The problem, of course, is that the townspeople don't respect the samurai, and by having an affair, Shino is greatly disrespecting her family.

    "Seven Samurai" is longer than most movies you'll ever see, but it's never really boring. The last half of the film is mostly all action separated by the strategic planning sequences. A huge testament to the pacing of the film is that the battles never become tedious: Kurosawa only wets our lips before bringing us back into a sort of release where the men simply sit around a fire. "Seven Samurai" is, above all, an action film - but it's fighting sequences don't feel as painfully long as many modern installments in the genre.

    "Seven Samurai", along with "Rashomon", are considered the two masterpieces of one of cinema's most iconic and groundbreaking directors. For a film with that praise, however, "Seven Samurai" is remarkably accessible to all ages - telling a familiar satisfying journey well and in an exciting fashion.
  • stopitgoaway
    January 9, 2009
    stopitgoaway
    Well, if you haven't seen Seven Samurai then you're not really qualified to call yourself a film fan, basically. One of the most influential movies of all time, that still holds up extremely well nearly 50 years later. Akira Kurosawa's epic tale of heroism and barbarism set the s...( read more)tandard in so many ways it's hard to imagine that any modern film does not show its influence in some way or other. A great script, great characters, mostly great acting, splendid cinematography and action sequences that wrote the book about how these things should be filmed. Even now, after so many have tried to imitate or beat it, Seven Samurai remains a totally gripping 3.5 hour experience. Akira Kurosawa is one of the gods of Cinema - men who seem to have been born to make films, who have it in their blood. People like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, King Hu and Steven Spielberg, who make it look easy... who so obviously "get it". In this pantheon, Kurosawa is perhaps the daddy of them all, however, and Seven Samurai is one of his finest moments. The scale of the production is remarkable - to undertake making such an epic in post-war Japan was a feat in itself. The cast of dozens of inhabitants of a village specially built for the movie, the 40 bandits and their horses, all the costumes, the armour, the weapons. Few directors could have brought all of this together and still paid such attention to the smallest of details in script and scene. Credit must go to the team Kurosawa worked with too, I presume The movie's setup became the template for many movies to follow, the most recentl example that comes to mind being the excellent Korean period movie MUSA (The Warrior), for example. A motley band of characters is assembled and placed in a situation where the odds are seemingly stacked against them, and each gets there chance to really shine, prove themselves and become something more than a normal man. Kurosawa's Samurai movies all share a little bit in common, which is the depiction of the Samurai as some noble beast, different from the common and pathetic rabble of ordinary man. In Seven Samurai the farmers are a base lot, cowardly, selfish, vain, pathetic and treacherous. How he found actors with such miserable looking faces is a mystery in itself. In contrast, the Samurai embody all the qualities that humanity would generally like to believe define it (us). Brave, righteous, honest, strong and heroic. Toshiro Mifune's character stands in the middle and represents this difference - perhaps meant to suggest that mankind can strive to rise above his flaws, but mostly suggesting to me that the common man is basically a mess and we should learn to respect our betters. Kurosawa was definitely not a socialist, unless I'm mis-reading him wildly. I'm sure many out there wonder, does a 50 year old black and white movie about Samurai really have any interest or relevance to us in the 21st century? The answer is a definite "Yes!". Seven Samurai shows us what cinema can be, what cinema is *meant* to be. It is moving picture as art in a way that the multiplex-fillers of today cannot possibly claim to be. It's a film that satisfies on many different levels, and still provides a bench mark which today's film makers could and should use to evaluate their own contributions. True, few out there will ever be able to claim they've made a film that rivals Seven Samurai in scope or beauty, but this *is* what every director should aspire to! The sad thing is, I just can't see a project like this ever coming out of the Hollywood studio system, where art is just another commodity and marketing is the new god
  • Crustlust
    November 18, 2009
    Crustlust
    A timeless masterpiece
  • mrchewbacca
    November 4, 2009
    mrchewbacca
    Fantastic, this moovie ispired the american western cinema of the 70's
  • neowerewolf
    October 27, 2009
    neowerewolf
    Excelent art work form the master Akira Kurozawa, great takes that no one at that time make, with an interesting story about 7 Samurai helping a needed village, and those guys will make the job, not for money, not for fame, just for help the most needest. And for me my favorite o...( read more)f all 7 samurai is Kyuzo, the geat samurai master!
  • theddz
    October 24, 2009
    theddz
    yes i want see this movie
  • ElCochran90
    October 18, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "So. Again we are defeated.
    ---
    The farmers have won. Not us."

    SHICHININ NO SAMURAI (1954)


    Director: Akira Kurosawa
    Country: Japan
    Genre: Action / Adventure / Drama
    Length: 207 minutes

    ...( read more)://s712.photobucket.com/albums/ww125/ElCochran90/Decorated%20images/?action=view¤t=SevenSamurai.jpg" target="_blank">Photobucket

    Akira Kurosawa is one of the most critically acclaimed directors in the history of cinematography, and he undoubtedly has become in the most influencing filmmaker for future generations for decades to come since he started to construct his extraordinary and enviable filmography. Kurosawa popularized the samurai genre within the Seventh Art considerably and his incomparable stories achieved to inspire several directors such as John Sturges with The Magnificent Seven (1960), Sergio Leone mainly with Per un Pugno di Dollari (1964), Sergio Corbucci with Django (1966), George Lucas with Star Wars (1977), Walter Hill with Last Man Standing (1996), John Lasseter with A Bug's Life (1998), Quentin Tarantino more notably with Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004), and Takashi Miike with Sukiyaki Western Django (2007). Being an avid fan of epic filmmaking, Shichinin no Samurai is one of the most outstanding, powerful and unique epic stories that cinema could have ever offered. Although Kurosawa has been considered as the Japanese father of Blockbuster films several times because of the high entertainment quality that his timeless gems have provided to several generations, he was definitely one of the greatest directors that ever lived and being Shichinin no Samurai his most representative epic masterwork in his whole filmography, it is arguably the best film he ever made as well.

    Akira Kurosawa edited, wrote and directed this story that deals with a poor village that is under constant attack by a bunch of bandits who steal their rice, so the village hires seven unemployed samurai that can help them to fight against the bandits. The film received two Academy Award nominations including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White losing against Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) and for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White losing against The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956). This film should have won both of these awards, but remember we are talking about the Academy Awards, so those decisions shouldn't be that odd to us. Although the category for Best Foreign Language Film wasn't considered until the year of 1947 as an Honorary Award to films that were released outside of the United States with a predominant foreign language, it was precisely in the year of 1956 when the category was formally created. La Strada (1954), by Federico Fellini, is obviously a neorealist masterpiece, and it was a strong competition for the award of Best Foreign Language Film, but the injustice of this topic can be found on the fact that Shichinin no Samurai hadn't even been considered for this category, which is beyond me.

    I agree with the plot being very simple, but Shichinin no Samurai didn't win the title of "one of the best movies ever made" for free, which it definitely is. It is the narrative structure and the way the story is handled what make of this film a giant epic. The degree of entertainment that Shichinin no Samurai ends up having is pretty high, and that is one of its main characteristics. However, this is not an aspect that negatively affects the film in the end. The story is told with such originality, style, power and glory that one can even conclude that the most adequate way to see such an unparalleled cinematographic project is on the big screen.

    Just like Robert De Niro is my favorite Hollywood actor, Toshirô Mifune is the best foreign actor I have ever seen on screen for my taste, even better than Max Von Sydow. Unlike several roles that Akira Kurosawa would give him in the future which would be characterized because of their cold-blooded, arrogant, calculating and relentless personalities in films such as Kumonosu Jô (1957), Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958) and his immortal character Sanjûrô in both Yojimbo (1961) and Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962), becoming a cinematographic legend and conforming one of the best pairs that cinema ever gave birth to alongside with Kurosawa, just like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Mifune interprets a committed, stubborn, obstinate, loyal, childish and hyperactive samurai with the right amount of craziness in Shichinin no Samurai, a character more similar to the one he interpreted in the deep dramatic jewel Rashômon (1950). Without a doubt, it is the most outstanding performance out of the whole brilliantly chosen cast. The performances of Takashi Shimura as the boss, Yoshio Inaba and Seiji Miyaguchi are pretty impressive as well.

    Kurosawa was trained as a painter before becoming a director, and Shichinin no Samurai is definitely the very first film where he employs an extraordinary cinematography. The handling of open and closed spaces is marvelous, and that aspect accompanied by the editing used to construct a splendid choreography which made the battle scenes easier to follow, conform an astonishing result which was useful to appropriately handle the action the film contains. The rhythm of the story is not fast nor slow, but the most possibly adequate. We as spectators don't really feel those 207 minutes lasting an eternity. This gives to the story a much more realistic and more human tone. The movie takes the time it needs to present us the psychology and to let us understand the behavior of the most important characters to an adequate degree, making us to create empathy and interest towards all of them. Kurosawa was also very careful with every detail that composes this masterpiece. The script is wonderfully written by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, and it enabled to create very distinguishable characters, which brings a very interesting variety.

    The handling of the action is pretty much realistic. The battle scenes are very characteristic of how Kurosawa tends to create action in his epic films, which reached their maximum expression in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985). It can't be denied the fact that there's a lot of action from beginning to end, culminating with a final battle that involves 40 bandits attacking the village once again, but there is substance behind it, clearly justifying it and never losing its credibility. Both the sound and the editing couldn't have been created in a better way considering that we're talking about a film of the 50's. The music is spectacular as well as it is classic, and very characteristic for both the period it was made and the country where it was directed. The most notorious piece of music is played during the opening credits.

    Shichinin no Samurai is undoubtedly my favorite film of its genre. I consider Seppuku (1962), by Masaki Kobayashi, as a deeper and more human and complex film, instantly being a superior project which doesn't particularly focuses on action, but on creating art. Even so, the grandiosity of Kurosawa's jewel is undeniable, and it has been one of the major influences in cinema history. It deserves both the admiration and the credit from the people that get the chance to see it and from the numerous directors and filmmakers that were influenced by this eternal gem in any way.

    100/100

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Comments

  • kanokaan
    August 14, 2009
    kanokaan
    It is a happy end but one of the saddest finale in history.
  • IRONMANBLAST
    February 27, 2008
    IRONMANBLAST
    There is actually A remake In the works
    What are they thinking!!?!??!
    This is the kind of Movie you never ever ever do a remake of Horrible simply Horrible.

    The Original is Amazing and Timeless just keep it the way it is
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    January 28, 2008
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  • alhamo83
    October 25, 2007
    alhamo83
    He's like Jack Sparrow, but with Samurai.
  • illmostro
    March 5, 2007
    illmostro
    Toshiro Mifune is always amazing, but in this movie he is definitely out of this world. How many other japanese actors can handle to portray Kikuchiyo with so much power as Mifune does?
    I'm impresed by the way he was so explosive with the changes of mood of this character. It is like an opera singer like Bjoerling moving from chest, to middle, and to head voice, making it look so easy...just so unbelievably efficient.
    I love Toshiro.
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The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) Trivia

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  • Name this classic film that originated the idea of "A CREW" - defining such plot elements as the recruiting/gathering of heroes who each display a select talent to form a team. Films like Ocean 11, Sneakers, Bug's Life, and X-Men all use this plot idea. From what movie did this originate?   Answer »
  • The Magnificent Seven is the remake of what japanese film? (english title)  Answer »
  • Name the title of the 1954 classic that for the first time made use of slow motion action sequences?  Answer »
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