"Shichinin no samurai", also known as "Seven Samurai", is a film by Akira Kurosawa released on 19 November 1956. It was a Japanese film about a small village that was having trouble with a group of forty armed bandits. The village hires a samurai to help defend the village. The samurai Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) determines that he will need six other samurai to defend the village. The total of seven samurai trains the village how to defend themselves. They end up using a cunning strategy to cut some of the bandits off from the others to take out several at a time. At the same time there is an underling story of romance. This film is a very interesting film that uses filming techniques and quality far beyond its time. Akira Kurosawa was one of the first to use multiple cameras to get different angles. It has the action needed to catch the viewer with an underling story of love. It shows seven people who got together to help a village in need, which created a bond together that will last a lifetime. The village had a great victory defeating the bandits, but the samurai lost, in that they lose several of their new found friends. For me, this movie is a very inspirational film, which shows how friendship can be formed in even extreme times. It has the quality needed and the length to have a well formed plot that is difficult to see with many of the shorter films that they have now. Many films try to catch the viewer with special effects and attractive people, but this film did not have that option and had to use the plot and amazing filming techniques to attract the viewer.
Review of Seven Samurai
