My Review of "Seven Samurai (1954)"

Seven Samurai (1954) is one of the most famed movies from Akira Kurosawa. There's so many movies, shows and books that take inspiration from this movie. Watching it you can see how much it has influenced pop culture today. As a movie to watch, I would say it's not for everyone.

The movie starts out with some bandits looking to ransack a small farming village. They've already stolen from this same village not too long ago so they decide to wait until the farmers harvest more good before coming back.

Two unfortunate farmers were able to overhear this plan and let the villagers know they heard. This brings up a huge discussion with the poor villagers. They don't know what to do and their morale is at an all time low.

They have nowhere to go but to the village elder to see what he suggests. This elder tells the villagers that they must fight back. In order to do that they will have to hire on some samurais to defend the village. The problem is that the bandits had stolen so much from them that they barely have anything to offer.

The villagers decide to see what they can do knowing that this might very well be an impossible task. To their surprise there is some good out there. Despite the many self serving samurais out there they stumble upon Kambei a virtuous samurai. He's not in it for the money and just wants to do the right thing.

Kambei learns of the villager's dilemma and agrees to help but mentions that they need 7 samurai in order to properly defend their village from such a huge army of bandits.

The film then goes into three more major parts. They will first assemble the seven samurai. We learn all of the interesting quarks and nuances of each of these samurai. The scene stealer was notably Kikuchiyo. His antics and ego really create a much more complicated and charismatic character.

Then the samurai have to plan and prepare for the eradication of the bandits. Instead of using a quick montage to understand the preparations involved we see what each of the characters must do to implement this complex set up.

Finally they have the big fight at the end. This is a tour de force in action. There's so much going on and you don't know what's going to happen to whom. Everyone is vulnerable to die making this portion of the movie extremely intense as we have all gotten to like all of the characters in the village.

For those with shorter attention spans you should stay away from this movie. It clocks at almost 4 hours long. There's even an intermission halfway into the movie. Although it is long you can tell its done deliberately. The film soaks up certain emotional moments so that you can really absorb what's going on. Films nowadays will quick cut into different scenes without allowing the audience to truly absorb the emotional intention of the scene.

You also have to get acclimatized to the method of acting in this movie. It's pretty over the top at times and at times a little comical. When sad scenes are over the top with everyone sobbing and there are a lot of sad scenes in this movie. Movies were like that back in the day so you can't really fault them for this.

Also the makeup is pretty old school. Now with higher resolution blu-ray, you can see stitching of where they added fake hair or bald caps. Some of the make up is oddly comical to see as they're way over the top. However the costume designs are very cool. Their attire is styled to 16th century Japan. You'd never think they could pull of such stylish things with simple clothes.

I watched this movie back when I was in my early 20s and absolutely loved it. This movie made me reconsider older movies as they told stories in a different way and I could appreciate the art. Now much older and in 2022 there's just been so much thrown at us. I don't know how I was able to absorb an almost 4 hour movie in one sitting like I did in the past. This is not a movie for everyone. They have drawn out scenes to focus on the facial emotions and beautifully composed scenes. It's all part of the experience but not everyone will be able to get into it.

Overall, I still love this movie but not as much as when I first saw it. You really have to be in a certain mood in order to watch this movie. There are other things to take away from this movie while watching like understanding its influence and its attention to story telling. I would have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. It's sad to say but this second viewing is nowhere near the oh my gosh moment that I had when I first saw it.