Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Seven Samurai

3h 27m

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1954 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, SEVEN SAMURAI (SHICHININ NO SAMURAI) tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This three-hour ride from Akira Kurosawa, featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action, into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.

Up Next in Directed by Akira Kurosawa

  • I Live in Fear
    1:43:32
    I Live in Fear

    I Live in Fear

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1955 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki

    Both the final film of this period in which Akira Kurosawa would directly wrestle with the demons of the Second World War and his most literal representation of living in an atomic age, the galvanizing I LIVE IN FEA...

  • Throne of Blood
    1:49:51
    Throne of Blood

    Throne of Blood

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1957 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Minoru Chiaki

    A vivid, visceral “Macbeth” adaptation, THRONE OF BLOOD, directed by Akira Kurosawa, sets Shakespeare’s definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan....

  • The Lower Depths
    2:05:06
    The Lower Depths

    The Lower Depths

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1957 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyoko Kagawa

    One of Akira Kurosawa’s darkest, most uncompromising films, this by turns bleak and blackly comic adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s social-realist play transplants the story to nineteenth-century Japan, where...

×