Seven Samurai

Shichinin No Samurai

Dir. Akira Kurosawa

Japan 1954 | Black & white | 190 mins | Cert PG

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura

Kurosawa’s masterful eastern Western, set in seventeenth-century Japan, brings together seven warriors to defend an unprotected village from bandits. Mifune is memorable as the would-be samurai and Shimura is the ageing, charismatic samurai leader. As skilled in its delineation of character as in its brutal action sequences, the film has been recycled in many forms, most notably in The Magnificent Seven (1960).

Available on: DVD, 35mm