A group of villagers suffers from the repeated attacks from bandits. Some of the villagers are extremely afraid and wish not to fight the Samurai, but live in a parasitic-like co-relationship between the bandits and the villagers, but Rikichi, hot-headed and with nothing to lose, wishes to hire Samurai to finally win back their lives and their food so they don't starve anymore. So, Rikichi and a group of other villagers set off to another village to search for Samurai. There, they meet Kembai, after he shaves a sign of Samurai Honor, a braid of hair, and saves a child from a kidnapper. They ask him to join their resistance against the Samurai, and with initial reluctance, he goes, recruiting his friend, a fellow Samurai, Shichiroji, and four others, a friendly and cheerful, Gorobei, a rich and young Okamoto, Heihachi, and Kyuzo. Eventually, a man claiming to be a Samurai drunkenly comes in, fails the trap, and shows his family scroll, although it is for a teenager. He threatens to battle them all, but they defeat him. As they journey out of the place, he follows them, wishing to become a Samurai. When they reach the villager's place, all of the villagers are too afraid to come out, and the Seventh Samurai, Kikuchiyo, shows his use by rattling the village alarm, making everyone come out. Kikuchiyo taunts and mocks each of the villagers, and it continues with each of them training up the villagers. Eventually, the bandits arrive, and they have trained the villagers well with sharpened bamboo stakes. They burn down an old man's home, kill many villagers, and eventually, arrive in the village, threatening many of the women. But, after shooting Kyuzo and Heihachi dead, Kikuchiyo arrives, bursting through the door, and killing the bandit. Eventually, they win the village back from the Samurai, but Kembai knows "In the end, we lost this battle too. The victory belongs to the peasants, not to us".
| The Beauty And Action Of Seven SamuraiMany people today consider the action genre lost. The contemporary superhero movie is unsatisfying, seeming to be dull, dead, and numb. There is no life. The heroes do their things lifelessly on screen. But Seven Samurai is the pinnacle of the action, yet nothing can, perhaps, ever reach the height it had once reached. Not scenes that display the pinnacle of physicality, but in fact, the emotional intensity, not tension, the pure character that rages through each of them, as they try to keep a calm face in the place of Chaos. Action and emotion merge together in Seven Samurai, through action with actual impact. Despite weak technology compared to today's blockbusters, today's Seven Samurai feels much more meaningful. The action is less, never focused upon, and the protagonists know that each death carries significance. We know each of the character's objectives, and the audience can sympathize, feel, and know each success and failure. One can see themselves on the battlefield, fearing their deaths, fearing their lives, knowing what they feel. This is why movies like Planet Of The Apes, Mad Max, and more feel dull(Although, they are beautiful and blazing lively on the outside). Explosions, character changes, people, deaths, their lives are meaningless because they display no good in their hearts, no objective, rather, the plot forces them to do so. Seven Samurai feels more meaningful because of this. Every moment communicates death and risk, a sense of extreme urgency. This is why Seven Samurai is still influential in cinema today because what is Black And White can be seen in our max influx of three-dimensions, terrifying color, and IMAX screens that blaze rumbling sound all over the world, while Seven Samurai is simple, yet great. A forward-thinking piece. |
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