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Playing a masterless samurai named Sanjuro Kuwabatake, Toshiro Mifune swaggers into a corrupt town dominated by gangsters and venal merchants and decides -- mainly because it would amuse him -- that the place would be much better if they were all dead. He designs an elaborate series of machinations that will culminate in the bad guys wiping themselves out. The ingenious story allows Kurosawa to create some rousing swordplay and Mifune to work at his most charismatic. With SEVEN SAMURAI, this is Kurosawa's most popular film and, like the former, it has been the source for numerous Hollywood remakes, including A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and LAST MAN STANDING. With the town's dusty main street, site of a "high noon"-style showdown -- the hero's sword is pitted against the villain's pistol -- the film bears some resemblance to an American Western. But the similarities are mainly superficial. Kurosawa is using the 19th-century Tokugawa-era setting in ways that draw specifically on Japanese historical experience, and he is constructing a symbolic fantasy in which the historical loser -- the samurai -- prevails against the historical winner -- the merchants, who embody a nascent capitalism and are the ancestors of Japan's 20th-century economic miracle. The film is enjoyable as superbly crafted entertainment (Kurosawa said he wanted to make a fun picture) as well as for the subtleties of Kurosawa's historical portrait.
-- Stephen Prince
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