Seven Samurai (1954)

Simply Perfect

From my favorite movies..

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I've been on a Toho binge for a while now and for the most part the films have been enjoyable, especially those by Kurosawa. The earlier films were dark, bleak and unsettling viewing and therefore going into Seven Samurai I was of two minds. First I expected more of the same, in both quality and tone but then on the flipside at time of writing this is ranked as the 19th highest rated movie on IMDB which is incredible.My expectations were that it would be good, but that's about it. Seeing Takashi Shimura in the credits also confirmed my logic that this was going to at least be an entertaining three and a half hours.I was mistaken, Seven Samurai is not good............it's outstanding.Wonderfully crafted, perfectly scored, incredibly choreographed, well acted and beautifully written this is well deserving of it's high place and I would consider it nothing short of a masterpiece.If you check out my IMDB rating distribution it's very clear to see that getting anything higher than an eight is a rarity, this deserves it on so many levels.I didn't expect this level of quality further as generally I don't tend to agree with titles in the IMDB top 250, this however I do I thoroughly unconditionally agree.A masterpiece and essential viewing, I don't even need to give the premise of the movie in this review and must simply stress that this is film making mastery at its finest.The Good:Takashi ShimuraVery well shot for its timePerfectly craftedThe Bad:Nothing springs to mindThings I Learnt From This Movie:Akira Kurosawas should be a household name, not Bruckheimer or Bay!I'll put money down now that none of the remakes or movies heavily influenced by Seven Samurai comes close in quality

The story of the Seven Samurai is not a cliché but it is treading an existing type of movie, namely a type of movie in which the story builds to an important event. This event will test several characters, showing how they deal with the said event and with one another. Normally, the formula to such a movie requires the first 80% of the movie to be devoted to showing the backstory of each character who will be present for the final event. This is necessary because you have multiple characters and you need to understand the backstory of each of them as well as the relationships between them in order to understand and fully appreciate their behaviour during the final event. Seven Samurai gives a little bit of an introduction for each character, but not much. Not long after seeing this movie, I have completely forgotten 3 out of the 7 samurai. And I would only be able to describe the characters of 2 out of the 7 people, and only briefly. It is not a spoiler to say that some of the samurai are not going to make it out alive, but it's hard to care when the characters are so undeveloped.As for the acting in this movie, it is a matter of taste. The Japanese sometimes have a really expressive line delivery, which is most evident in anime production. This delivery is aided by the fact that the Japanese language, even when spoken at a conversational speed, can easily be made to sound more pressurised than Western languages, with a lot of harsh "zh" and "sh" mushed together for effect. And in addition to that, older movies in general seem to suffer from overenthusiastic acting - a leftover from the theatrical era when it was actually necessary due to the distance between the performers and the viewers. Perhaps as a result of all 3 of these factors, there is a lot of overacting in this film. Specifically, Toshiro Mifune's character was given artistic license to physical improvisation by the director and Toshiro ran with it all the way to cartoon-land. I felt a physical need to look away during some of the scenes because it just got too weird for me to handle. That is not to say that the acting is bad. It's great but very stylised.I read that the reason why Toshiro was given the liberty to go nuts is because the director was worried that the movie would otherwise be too quiet and boring. He was sort of right, because when you remove Toshiro's character and his contribution to the themes concerning the position and identity of the peasant class, the film is just a story about a few people coming together and then fighting off an attack. It moves slowly, at almost 3 hours long, and not all of the scenes feel necessary.The good part is that, despite of it all the shortcomings, the film remains entertaining. The scenes are shot with competence. I am just somewhat surprised to see all the overwhelmingly positive reactions to this film.

Reviewing classics is like reviewing the invention of the wheel. The most important thing is that the invention has overgrown its inventor and has become much more than "just another wheel" or probably the beginning of something great. Seven Samurai was my first movie from the filmography of this wonderful japanese director and I can say only one bad thing about - it's long. Unbearably long. Don't take this the wrong way, I like when the movie pushes boundaries of running time and shows you the greatest story that you enjoy watching every second. Gone with the wind. Ben-Hur. Lawrence of Arabia. Even the silent ones, Dr. Mabuse and Die Nibelungen (which both are over 4 hours) have got that something that glues you to your seat until the very end. It's the story. The story that doesn't allow you to leave for a second. Sadly it's not the case with Seven Samurai. Maybe because the story itself isn't that exciting and the plot is very simple so you can easily skip some scenes, delete an hour of running time and it will be perfect. A masterpiece. And again, don't take this the wrong way, this movie is a masterpiece. The characters (especially Kikuchiyo), music, cinematography, editing, locations; everything was superb. Except for the fact that you could easily fall asleep starting 35 min mark running time. A must watch for true fans of cinema as an art.

Movie Review: "Seven Samurai" (1954)Coming out of a deeply-depressive picture "Ikiru" (1952), leading actor Takashi Shimura (1905-1982) and director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) conceive the highest production budget from Toho Studio Company, Japan at that time to not only produce a masterful entertaining movie, even more in its 160-Minute International Editorial by the contractual final-cut-approved director for nevertheless timid first screenings at Venice Film Festival in its 15th edition between August 22nd to September 7th 1954."Seven Samurai" becomes one of the rare movies that must go with any audience of any age, any sex or a generation-gap-defying motion picture achievement in terms of its flawless use of cinematography as visual story-telling tool with pin-pointing and over-laying defiance sound design in stellar atmospheric black and white image system in the ocassional use of slow-motion shot, especially in samurai sword duels, inevitable tense in suspense, when only an Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) picture is able to match out the brilliance in visual composition of this arguably most accomplished picture of Akria Kurosawa's peaking career as director at age 43.When the motion pictures only misstep becomes to generate far too many versions of "Seven Samurai", on a competitive market of taking time to watch, with ranging running times from 150 up to 207 Minutes, which is believed to be the initial director's cut to encounter on. Furthermore production design are as researched as can, a pure bliss to witness on calm to receive on holiday afternoon watch toward dinner time, when supporting actor Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997) steals every scene he encounters as character of Kikuchiyo; futhermore put in proporties as additionally-dressed and ultra-long samurai-sword armed imposter of a samurai warrior, who never served a master in his life to nevertheless be the one, who beats the decisive battles with skill and wisdom to win spiritually as physically for samurai-hiring rural villagers against fierce imperalistic anarchy-indulging bandits in times of civil war after a collapsing Feudal system raging through Japanese 16th century. © 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)