Review: Seven Samurai 4K UHD
4K UHD Blu-ray: Seven Samurai (1954)
HOW do you review one of the most famous and influential films of all time? It’s hard, because everything that could be said about this film, has been, a million reviews, a thousand articles… and an awful lot of copy-cat films (such as John Sturges’ acclaimed The Magnificent Seven, and dare I say, Lucas’ Star Wars). This film influenced so many other filmmakers and films, from Sergio Leone to Steven Spielberg.
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is – a masterpiece of cinema, and… I suspect very few of you have seen it. So instead of a scholarly essay on its merits, lets just look at it as an action film.
In medieval Japan a group of farmers whose village is repeatedly razed by bandits search for and find a heroic, masterless samurai (Takashi Shimura) for help, and can offer nothing but food in return. He hesitantly agrees and begins to assemble a band of samurai to defend and train the villagers to resist the bandits and save their village.
Starring Toshiro Mifune in his ‘world’ break out role (he was already famous in Japan) as a peasant masquerading as a samurai, this film can’t be anything BUT an action movie.
With heartfelt performances (it also has some very funny bits), and epic and naturalistic battle scenes of scared shitless villagers against bandits, it also touches on class, poverty and sex (a high class Samurai deflowers a willing peasant girl, then abandons her) in a way that Hollywood wouldn’t dream of.
Seeing Mifunes Bare arse throughout made me exclaim several times…’They couldn’t have shown THIS in Europe or America in 1954!
When you look at the films that came out in 1954 (Dail M for Murder, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Rear Window, Sabrina, Them!, Johnny Guitar) Perhaps only On The Waterfront came remotely close to Kurosawa, in storytelling, realism and war.
This newly restored 4K UHD Blu-ray by the BFI is amazing, with ‘better’ translated subtitles and a black, epic sound and picture so sharp you’d swear it was made yesterday.
I really hope more people give this film a chance, because it really is a cracking action film with some amazing fights.
Special features
- UHD: Restored 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Blu-ray: Restored in 4K and presented in High Definition
- Audio commentary by film critic Adrian Martin
- Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create – Seven Samurai (2002, 49 mins): part of the Toho Masterworks series featuring interviews with Kurosawa, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, writer Shinobu Hashimoto, actors Seiji Miyaguchi and Yoshio Tsuchiya, and others
- Philip Kemp’s selected scenes commentary (1999, 20 mins): the film critic and writer analyses key scenes, recorded for the BFI’s 1999 DVD release
- The Art of Akira Kurosawa (2013, 49 mins): Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns on Kurosawa’s career and influence
- My Life in Cinema (1993, 116 mins): Akira Kurosawa and Nagisa Oshima discuss Kurosawa’s life, career and legacy, filmed for the Directors Guild of Japan
- Original theatrical trailer
- Restoration trailer (2024)
- Image gallery
- Set of four postcards depicting iconic images from the film
- 80-page book with new essays by Tony Rayns, Cristina Álvarez López, Charlie Brigden and James-Masaki Ryan, plus writing by Philip Kemp and Jasper Sharp, and contemporary reviews by Gavin Lambert and director Tony Richardson
Review by Tina from discs kindly supplied by the BFI.
