Seven Samurai

Widely regarded as on of the finest, and most influential, films in the history of cinema, the Criterion Collection releases this new 4K/Blu-ray combo featuring the extras of previous releases and the film available in 4K for the first time. Akira Kurosawa's classic about a group of ronin hired to protect a village provided a template that would be reused, repurposed, and remade countless times over the years from The Magnificent Seven to Three Amigos to "The Magnificent Ferengi" while specific scenes from the film have inspired sequences in everything from Blade Runner to Mad Max: Fury Road.

The plot of the film involves a farming village strained to brink by regular attacks by bandits leading to some members of the town leaving the village in search of help. With little in the way of payment, other than the food they grow, they see out hungry and honorable samurai beginning with Kambei (Takashi Shimura) who then puts together a group of samurai in one of the most recreated sequences in film history such as Danny Ocean putting together a team of thieves in Ocean's Eleven.

After securing their warriors, the film focuses on the village's mixed reaction to the samurai, organizing and training the locals, the youngest samurai's (Isao Kimura) relationship with a farmer's daughter (Keiko Tsushima), contrasting the differences and similarities between the hired guns, and the epic stand of the village against the bandits over multiple days in some of the best action sequences filmed on camera interspersed with the tense waiting game between between the village and the bandits.

Regarded as Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai is a film that 70 years later is still influencing movies. There's not much new here, other than the addition of the 4K transfer, so it isn't necessarily a needed upgrade if you have the previously released Blu-ray version. Whatever version of the film you own, however, for fans of cinema, it marks a cultural touchstone of the industry as well as a damn fine film that deserves a spot on your shelf.

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• Title: Seven Samurai
• IMDb: link