Review: Shichinin No Samurai (1954)

Better known as "Seven Samurai" (and proof that I do watch good movies, too), this is one of Akira Kurosawa's best known movies. Even if you haven't seen the movie itself, you've probably seen a variant of it. It was remade (quite well) as a Western in 1960 as "The Magnificent Seven", which is the movie most people are likely to have seen. It was also the basis for several other not-so-good movies (no, I haven't seen them all) including "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980) and "I Sette Magnifici Gladiatori" ("The Seven Magnificent Gladiators") (1983), which are two that I have heard of, but haven't seen (or rather, I haven't seen "Battle Beyond the Stars" in so long that I don't remember it). The IMDB lists a total of eight remakes of this movie. The remakes have originated in Hong Kong, the US, the Phillipines (okay, that one was a joint US/Phililpines venture), Kazakhstan, India, Italy and Japan (a joint Japan/US release), so obviously the story fired the imaginations of people from many different cultures.

Why was it able to be remade in several different genres and different cultures? Because the basic plot is very simple. In "Sichinin No Samurai", a small Japanese farming village learns that bandits will be raiding them for their food once the harvest is over. After consulting with the Old Man of the village, they decide that the best solution is to try to hire a Samurai to defend them. Since they have no money, they need to find one that will work for food ("Find hungry samurai"). Once one is found, he considers the matter and decides that it will require at least a half-dozen in all to defend the village. He manages to recruit a somewhat diverse group of samurai, and they go to the village to scout things out, prepare the defenses (they make sure to leave only one easy direction for the bandits to attack) and attempt to train the villagers with weapons.

See what I mean about the basic plot being simple? All you need is a group of people (village) that are under threat by another group (bandits) against whom they have (or feel that they have) no defense. The people then seek out someone (samurai/gunslingers/gladiators) to do battle with this threat for them.

What's different is what's done with this basic plot. Kurosawa focused on the relations between the samurai (only 2 of whom knew each other prior to the events of the movie), between the samurai and the villagers, and between the villagers themselves. There are quite a few subplots running through the movie, all of which make for a good story. The bandits themselves have little identity beyond being bandits and a threat to the village and are almost secondary to the story.

So is this movie for everyone? Probably not. For one thing, it's long. Almost 3 1/2 hours long, in fact. The movie never seems to drag, though, so you probably won't mind the length. For another, the Japanese culture is quite different from the Western (Europe and the Americas) culture, so the behavior of the characters may seem a bit strange to some people (there's an awful lot of grovelling and wailing going on by some of the villagers). Lastly, it's in Japanese with subtitles. If there's an English (or any other language) dub of it out there, I'm not aware of it. Personally, I prefer watching a foreign film in its native language with the subtitles (the voices always seem off in dubbed movies), so I haven't looked to see if there's a dubbed version available on DVD. Oh, and it's also in black & white, which seems to bother some people.

Having said all that, do I recommend this movie? Hell yeah! It's a great movie, with great characters, a great story and it's beautifully filmed! I can't think of anything about this movie that I didn't like, and it's rare that I can say that. As long as you don't mind the length (you can always watch it in parts) or the subtitles, you should see this movie!