A young samurai named Katsushirō asks to become Kambei's disciple. Several villagers go into town and eventually find Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, whom they see rescuing a young boy held hostage by a cornered thief. Since they have no money and can only offer food as payment, Gisaku advises them to find hungry samurai.
The villagers overhear this and turn to Gisaku, the village elder and miller, who declares that they should hire samurai to protect them. In 1586, a bandit gang discusses raiding a mountain village, but their chief decides to wait until after the harvest. Its influence on the film industry has been unprecedented, and it is often regarded today as one of the most "remade, reworked, and referenced" films in cinema. It was also voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's 2018 international critics' poll. Since its release, Seven Samurai has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of the greatest films in cinema history, such as the BFI's Sight & Sound and Rotten Tomatoes polls. Many reviews compared the film to westerns. It was the second-highest grossing domestic film in Japan in 1954. It took a year to shoot and faced many difficulties. It follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who hire seven rōnin (masterless samurai) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.Īt the time, the film was the most expensive film made in Japan.
The story takes place in 1586 during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. Seven Samurai ( Japanese: 七人の侍, Hepburn: Shichinin no Samurai), released in the United States initially as The Magnificent Seven, is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai drama film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Japan rentals: ¥268.2 million ( $2.3 million)