Akira Kurosawa's bloody-minded political parable about the struggle for supremacy in a godforsaken 17th-century rural village. The feudists on both sides are uniformly petty, pea-brained, and baboonish (the only thing protecting them from one another is their cowardice), and justice is done when an unemployed samurai wanders into their midst and capriciously slaughters them all. Toshiro Mifune, scratching and swaggering to a great musical score, enjoys himself enormously as the nihilistic samurai who is endowed with an unsportsmanly superiority in the art of swordfighting. (1962) — Duncan Shepherd
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