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Summary: This movie would be better if...
Review: absolutely nothing else is done. The movie is great. If you wish to know why Kurosawa or Mifune are great artists, this is the movie that will set you up. The Criterion collection made it worth while to watch it over and over just to know what's behind every scene and tidbits. There's only one blooper in the show, it's an actually a technicality and the commentary tells you where it is.
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Summary: Brilliant Representation of People
Review: All right, let's get something straight. What makes a movie great, what motivates the common person of any denomination, nationality, belief, to be swept into a great story? Usually, you have to start with the basic essentials, the rudimentary elements that truly measure a film's enduring worth. Start with the characters. It doesn't matter if they're ostensibly archetypes, give them enough screen time to develop themselves, their mannerisms, paradoxes, and internal conflicts and we will discover close adaptions to human behavior. Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" is known for inspiring dozens of westerns , most notably the "Magnificient Seven", but in the long run, are action scenes what people of both genders and age truly value? Even given their exhilirating and climactic power, what pushes the plain, unassuming person to the helpless verge of tears, laughter, or quiet recognition is humanity. Oh, and what loud, boisterous, cachophonous, unbridled passion this movie posesses. Akira Kurosawa understood human nature very deeply. So deeply, that as a white American private school student I feel an affinity to early Japanese culture. I can rub heads with the dirty farmers, scowl at theives, shudder tacitly at bandits, find myself mystified by both the wise patience and fierce vitality of the samurai. Only a barking idiot would go on to describe, analyze, and erudicate every crevice of this film; it's great, all right? What must be mentioned, however, in order to understand Kurosawa's hidden thematic drives is his obsession with the timeless presence of ego. Ego in Kurosawa's films is what causes people to embellish their own stories ("Rashomon"), to feel superior to others ("Ran" and "Kagemusha"). Kurosawa knows that farmers aren't saints, and samurai can be greedy. Our egos can be detrimentally hindering to attaining acceptance of ourselves and others. Kurosawa knew his characters aren't perfect. Neither are we.
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Summary: Perhaps the best foreign film of all time...
Review: Akira Kurosawa is arguably one of the greatest directors of all time, simply because his magnificent work has so often been copied by other great directors, like Lucas and Scorsese. One of his all time greatest films though was The Seven Samurai, one of his first "Eastern Westerns." The Seven Samurai is definetly a tour de force of a movie, churning up about every emotion possible from its audience. The movie revolves around a group of lone samurai who are hired by a villiage to fight off a band of thieves. Each samurai has his own unique characteristic, and every time one of them is killed off, the group's loss is our loss as well. The movie is especially heightened by the wonderful performance of Toshiro Mifune, who portrays basically the outcast samurai with a jaded past. Throughout the movie not only does the group come to like him more, but we do as well. The bottom line is that this is a terrific movie, and anyone who has ever been a fan of foreign films, or even westerns for that matter, should definetly see it.
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Summary: I was scared by the theatrical trailer, but the film was...
Review: ...Great. If you like westerns such as The Good the Bad and the Ugly, or Once Upon a Time in the West. Or maybe your obsessed with Bushido Blade. In any case, if you can look past the subtitles and culture shock, you will find an excellent film about 7 diverse samurai.
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Summary: The heart is stronger than the sword
Review: This movie is not to be missed. Kurasawa had an eye for many things, but he saw the essence of compassion best. 'Seven Samurai' gives us spectacular action sequences, but more importantly, it gives us a glance into the human heart.
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Summary: One of the Best Movies of All Time
Review: The American reluctance to watch movies with subtitles has not stopped this film from being one of the most influential ever made. It is spellbinding from beginning to end; those foreign-phobic should be persuaded with extreme prejudice -- by gunpoint, if necessary.
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Summary: Excellent commentary to go along with classic movie.
Review: The running commentary you get on this DVD helped me appreciate this movie even more than I had done previously. An excellent purchase.
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Summary: Kurosawa's Masterpiece!
Review: The best Western ever made
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Summary: Certainly one of the best files ever made.
Review: I've seen this film many times over the last 30 years. It's the only film i can think of where i have been tempted to restart it as soon as it finishes.As for the many, many remakes: the latest in the list is Disney's BUG'S LIFE.
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Summary: One of the great triumphs of film
Review: Watch this film and you will agree that nearly every side of humanity is exposed in a way that has hardly been matched in any film since. I guarantee first time viewers that when you finish watching this movie your standards for good storytelling will raise higher than you could ever have imagined. This is one of those rare things in life that even the most seemingly perfect words can't describe. Once you see it, you will understand!
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