Seven Samurai

Release: 1954
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starring:  Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura
Details: Black and white, Japanese, PG





At just over three hours, black and white and subtitled, Seven Samurai has been sitting on my 'to watch' pile for as long as I can remember. Whilst I knew I'd probably enjoy it, it really did take some strong willpower and a long rainy afternoon to finally come round to it. I actually ended up watching it in three sittings with my mum who, surprisingly, found it as charming and watchable as I did.

Seven Samurai is one of those old 'classics'. The one that IMDB has in its top 250 and the one Empire says all other films should be measured by. One that film students/ fanatics can boast about watching and talk in great depth about its historical significance to the rest of the film world. I mean, yeah, it probably is culturally important/ the flagstone of all action films to come etc etc blah blah, but is it really worth 3 hours 9 minutes of your time? Or is just dated and a bore?

The story is satisfyingly simple. A small Japanese farming village is under threat of attack from bandits so they decide to try to hire a group of samurais to help defend themselves. The film follows their journey and preparation with the samurais, leading to the big final confrontation at the end.

It's surprisingly comical, both purposefully and accidentally as the dated elements become blatantly apparent. The joker of the group provides plenty of laughs, and my mum cackled at him prancing around the battle with his bum on show. On top of comedy it provides drama, action and romance - an all rounder in terms of genre providing some consistent entertainment for a wide audience. Although the romantic element was hilariously uncomfortable bordering on rapey. 

Ultimately, I wasn't bored and the dated elements shone through as charming. Perhaps it paid to watch in separate sittings, but it never felt particularly slow paced and there was plenty of variety within the simple story. So, if you have a spare boring rainy afternoon and fancy something easy to watch, which also happens to be an important part of cinema history, then give it a go. You'll certainly sound clever in film conversation having watched it. 

7 / 10

One for the film fanatics collection otherwise catch it on TV or rental.