The Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no samurai, 1954) is a movie by Akira Kurosawa starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune. The film takes place in war-ridden 16th century Japan, where a village of farmers look for ways to ward off a band of marauding robbers. Since they do not know how to fight, they hire seven ronin (lordless samurai) to fight for them.

Six of The Seven Samurai. From left to right, Katsushiro, Kikuchiyo, Shichiroji, Kyuzo, Heihachi, and Kambei.

Plot

The seven are:

• Kambei (Takashi Shimura) — the leader
• Katsushiro (Isao "Ko" Kimura ) — the young samurai who wants to be Kambei's disciple
• Gorobei (Yoshio Inaba ) — a skilled samurai who Kambei adopts as his right-hand man
• Shichiroji (Daisuke Kato ) — an old comrade of Kambei reunited with his friend
• Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi ) — a serious, stone-faced samurai who is a supremely skilled swordsman
• Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki ) — an amiable samurai whose skill is lacking but retains good cheer in the face of adversity
• Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) — a clowning would-be samurai who soon proves his worth to the others

The story unfolds gradually, and the heroes are not the cardboard cutouts popular in some action movies. There is a chemistry developing between the villagers and their helpers, and a fairly continuous role reversal. For instance, to attract the samurai into helping them cheaply, the villagers have to act dumb and poor. Later, when the samurai find out what the villagers are really like and think of rebelling against their clients, the clownish samurai Kikuchiyo turns around and shows his real intelligence by convincing his fellow warriors of their need to fight for their clients.

The film's climax is a battle scene, in which the samurai and villagers successfully drive off the attackers. However, four of the hired defenders do not survive the victory, and the remaining three are left to contemplate the village's victory celebration while ruefully noting that the villagers, while grateful for having preserved their land and their families, will not have much use for the warriors now that the fighting is done.

Several versions have been released, ranging in length from 141 to 160 minutes; the Japanese original and the U.S. reissue are both 203 minutes long.

The Seven Samurai's legacy

In 2004, Kurosawa's estate approved the production of an anime remake of the film, called Samurai 7.

The Magnificent Seven, Battle Beyond the Stars, and Dikij vostok are all remakes of The Seven Samurai.

The comedy film Three Amigos spun a twist on the Samurai plot: the gunslinging ronin are actually professional actors who think they are being hired to pretend to save a town from bandits. The same idea was later replicated in the entomological animated film A Bug's Life and the Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest.

External links

• Roger Ebert on The Seven Samurai
• Bright Lights Film Journal on The Seven Samurai