The Magnificent Seven Samurai

I recently had the opportunity to watch an uncut version of Seven Samurai (1954), total running time about three and half hours. I knew it was considered a classic, but I had no idea how good a fifty year old, black and white, subtitled, Japanese movie could be. It was really good!

I was also surprised at how familiar it was. It turns out that every action movie for the last five decades has been ripping off this classic piece of cinema. Not even counting the American remake, The Magnificent Seven (1960), the ripoffs include everything from Ocean's Eleven (1960) to A Bug's Life (1998) to Three Amigos (1986). Seven Samurai practically invented the reluctant hero character, the forbidden love of a hero for the peasant girl, the townspeople hiring heroes to help fight off bandits, the scene where a long line of bad guys crests a hill on horses, assembling a team of heroes for a mission, the slow motion death scene, panning battle scenes, the introduction of a hero through his performing an unrelated feat, the farm boy turned hero, and the one-by-one elimination of heroes as they battle the enemy.

We've seen these elements in movies like the Dirty Dozen (1967), Unforgiven (1992), the Guns of Navarone (1961), Star Wars (1977), Predator (1987), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and just about every other western, action and adventure movie made since the 1950's. Some movies purposely style a scene or a line of dialog in reference to Seven Samurai, while others do it inadvertently because this has become the conventional approach to making action movies. Either way, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Seven Samurai is rated in the Top 10 movies of all time by IMDB.