The village is constantly under attack by armed gangs well. One day after the attack, they seek the wisdom of a sheikh who tells them that they cannot buy weapons, but they can find men with weapons, or samurai, who will fight for them. They found the samurai with great experience with a healthy heart who agreed to fight for them without money. He chooses five real samurai and one suspect, but the seven return to the village to protect him from forty gangs.
Kurosawa's film is a model of long-form construction, ably fitting its asides and anecdotes into a powerful suspense structure that endures for all of the film's 208 minutes.
Synthesizes the traditions of the samurai narrative and the American western to create an intimate epic with deeply felt ground-level consequences. [Blu-ray]
Kurosawa's intention of making his first period film "entertaining enough to eat" is brought to that palpable condition through [Toshiro] Mifune's endlessly watchable peasant warrior.
