Seven Samurai – Shichinin no samurai (1954)

Directed by: Akiro Kurosawa | 204 minutes | action, western, adventure | Actors: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Kato, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Yoshio Kosugi, Bokuzen Hidari, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Okutmagaido, Jiro Kumagaido

What else is there to say about this mother of all action movies? Well, maybe the news is that on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary this film will return to cinemas (for now only in Amsterdam and Nijmegen), in a new polished copy and in the full 204 minute version. So real die-hards stop reading now and are on their way to the cinema.

Knowing that the real fans have already given up, the undersigned can now critically wonder aloud how relevant ‘Seven Samurai’ is today, without running the risk of meeting an angry sword-slinging Kurosawa adept at the front door one day.

First an introduction: ‘Seven Samurai’ did to the action and adventure genre in 1954 what Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ did to rock music the same year. Both proved to be a big bang for new genres that would both become billion-dollar industries in their own right, with genre rules all their own that still apply to this day.

One difference, however, is that no music lover will now claim that ‘Rock Around The Clock’ is one of the best songs ever made, important and innovative as it was, while ‘Seven Samurai’ is still regarded by film critics as one of the best movies ever made. Is this status of über-classic justified?

Yes and no. Of course ‘Seven Samurai’ was groundbreaking fifty years ago in several ways: The story around a group of main characters being recruited, a film that actually consisted of three separate successive stories, the beautifully filmed action scenes, the comic side character, and so on. by means of. We have all seen it so often in the past fifty years that it is difficult for a Western film viewer in 2004 to really appreciate this film. Kurosawa has done such pioneering work with this film that almost everything in this film seems ordinary to today’s viewer.

For example, you would ignore the fact that almost all story-technical aspects of this film have become the blueprint for action and adventure films as we know them today. What makes ‘Seven Samurai’ so unique is the fact that almost everything in this film had never been done before. That is perhaps an unparalleled uniqueness.

Yet ‘Seven Samurai’ has not withstood the test of time unscathed. The film actually starts very slowly without any real tension building up, and almost all the action and tension is in the last three quarters of an hour. In the first two hours there are also a lot of scenes that feel unnecessarily long and don’t really seem to add anything to the story. Roughly speaking: If ‘Seven Samurai’ had been half an hour shorter, it might have earned its status as a masterpiece more than it does now. And even though Kurosawa started the action genre with this film, this genre has since been sharpened and perfected by the Steven Spielbergs, Ridley Scotts and James Camerons of this world.

Still, it is commendable that the cradle of action films is now back on the silver screen: A little film connoisseur can play a game of watch-and-compare for hours when watching ‘Seven Samurai’. For example, it’s nice to see how the experienced samurai leader and the crooked old village sage have been taken over almost literally by George Lucas in his ‘Star Wars’ in the form of Ben Kenobi and Yoda, which in turn have become synonymous in colloquial terms worldwide. become for mentor and old sage. In addition, Kurosawa’s long close-ups of difficult-looking tough protagonists have even inspired an entire genre in itself, namely the spaghetti western.

So this film is absolutely essential for anyone who wants to know where Abrahams like Sergio Leone and George Lucas got their mustard, regardless of whether ‘Seven Samurai’ is dated nostalgia or a timeless masterpiece.