The Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai was over all a good movie. It had some noticeable flaws though and I would not necessarily put it in a best movie category. The plot had a lot of potential but did not deliver all of it. The movie was slightly lacking in some important story development aspects.

The characters were very dynamic but underdeveloped. They hinted at some of their background but they did not elaborate on much of it, especially with Kambei and Kikuchiyo. Kambei never gave any information on his past and his relations with some of the other samurai. They acknowledged that he knew them and that they were friends but never went deeper. Kikuchiyo had a past with adapting a samurai’s persona but not truly being one that was not explained as well. Kurosawa concentrated more on the philosophy of the story than the characters in it.

The acting was pretty good but there were a few moments where the emotion just did not seem believable but the dialog in the movie was pretty good throughout. The costumes and the setting were authentic to Japan in that time. They were a little too revealing for my liking though (basically men in thongs). The music was generally slow and authentic but had some faster points in the battle scenes. There were not many special effects when this movie was made in 1954 and very few if any were used. It was very slow moving in some scenes and the movie reaches almost 3 ½ hours in length and there was not that much action and the action that was there was toward the end.

On the more positive side, the movie did a great job of showing the difference in classes. It creates struggles with the town and trying to get help and it also causes Kikuchiyo problems when trying to becoming one of the group. The class problems also create tension when the father of Shino does not want her to fall in love with a samurai because of the class difference and it eventually leads to a love conflict in the end that is never resolved.

Much of this movie I could probably understand better if I knew more about the Japanese culture. Many of the things in here were cultural and it was assumed that the watcher would know what is going on. I did not understand many of the characters’ gestures and phrases to each other because of this. It may have made the acting, especially, more believable if I had known these things. For the most part the movie was good and I would recommend that you see it but just expect it to be a little slow in some parts and there to be missing some of the background information.