This is simply the story of a poor farming village terrorised by bandits who decide to hire Samurai (or Ronin - masterless Samurai) to protect them. However as they are only able to offer food and accommodation, it proves to be very difficult. It sheds a light on all aspects of the Samurai class and how their fighting has affected the lives of farmers and shows the plight of a farmer at the time.
Although Kurosawa was himself influenced by some of the grand shots of the Ford Westerns, his Samurai films are unrivalled in their brilliance and to this day no remake or adaptation has come close to Kurosawa's genius and his adaptations of Shakespeare plays make Olivier's "Hamlet" look like a student film, and I love the Olivier Shakespeare films. I know this is a bold statement and I certainly don't expect everyone will agree with me.
If you haven't seen a Kurosawa film before and are not used to the long epics, I would recommend first watching "Yojimbo", which inspired Sergio Leone's "Fistful of Dollars", or "Hidden Fortress", which George Lucas admits gave him a bit of inspiration for "Star Wars".
The 3 1/2 hours fly by and causes you to feel almost every emotion possible in what is truly the perfect film. It should be much high on IMDBs top 250, #20 is far too low.
NB: If you do end up enjoying Kurosawa films, they can be very very addictive! (4 excellent box sets to own are, The Samurai Collection, The Classics Collection, The Crime Collection and The Early Kurosawa Collection).
Although Kurosawa was himself influenced by some of the grand shots of the Ford Westerns, his Samurai films are unrivalled in their brilliance and to this day no remake or adaptation has come close to Kurosawa's genius and his adaptations of Shakespeare plays make Olivier's "Hamlet" look like a student film, and I love the Olivier Shakespeare films. I know this is a bold statement and I certainly don't expect everyone will agree with me.
If you haven't seen a Kurosawa film before and are not used to the long epics, I would recommend first watching "Yojimbo", which inspired Sergio Leone's "Fistful of Dollars", or "Hidden Fortress", which George Lucas admits gave him a bit of inspiration for "Star Wars".
The 3 1/2 hours fly by and causes you to feel almost every emotion possible in what is truly the perfect film. It should be much high on IMDBs top 250, #20 is far too low.
NB: If you do end up enjoying Kurosawa films, they can be very very addictive! (4 excellent box sets to own are, The Samurai Collection, The Classics Collection, The Crime Collection and The Early Kurosawa Collection).
