encyclopediahearsay

Seven Samurai is a movie from, I want to say, the 1950s. It would be safest to call it the “post-war” period. One of the most acclaimed samurai movies of all time, it is also generally regarded as the best film by director Akira Kurosawa, and, with a runtime of somewhere around four hours[1], one of his longest. Rashomon is definitely way shorter.

The film opens with several scenes of people on a farm doing farm things, in black and white. The people are sad, but also noble, because they work with their hands. It rains a lot; how this unusual weather affects the crops is unknown. At one point bandits show up. If the bandits were a species of bug, they would be grasshoppers.[2] When they leave, a little boy comes up with a plan to recruit samurai to protect them. There is a long scene where potential samurai come through a door, and the general vibe is something about how real samurai would know there’s someone hiding behind the door.[3] It’s like in Ronin how he catches the mug before it hits the ground. Samurai have very good reflexes. One of them is a drunk named Toshiro Mifune. He was friends with the director. The little boy’s voice is the Japanese equivalent of Dave Foley’s.[4]

There are several showdowns between the samurai and the bandits, and several of the samurai get killed. The bandits learn a lesson about human nature and vow to subtly but definitely change their ways. Most of this is conveyed through close-up shots of different characters’ eyes.

Seven Samurai has been remade several times, as The Magnificent Seven, A Bug’s Life, and 12 Angry Men (they had to add five men to the cast for this version). It either made a lot of money at the time, or is a cult classic. Reviews were good. Possibly it offends people actually from Japan.[5] The Simpsons has most likely made several references to the film, too, none of which I picked up on.

A recent study[6] suggested 70% of film students refer to the movie in casual conversation at least once per week. But perhaps its most enduring legacy is the figure of speech coined after its release: “A samurai in the hand is worth seven in the bush.”