Episode 133: Seven Samurai with Joe Payne

We are BACK. It’s season 5!!!

We are talking about Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai!

Forrest Miller, Conan Neutron and J. Andrew World are joined by Joe Payne of Bad Takes to talk about Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI.

Truly one of the greatest films of all time. A story so great it has been directly remade TWICE directly, and homaged a few other times. fantastic performances all around, absolutely groundbreaking action scenes, and a tale so compelling it makes the running time seem justified. So massive! So sprawling! Yet never losing sight of what makes it all work. It still manages to be an emotional blockbuster.

The assembling of the team alone is so iconic and fascinating, each with their own motivations, goals and rationale. Modern movie making owes much of “building the team” with this film.

The farmers are not just helpless victims, they are cunning and dangerous and have a secret. They’ve cut down and robbed fleeing samurai warriors in the past. However, Kikuchiyo points out that it is the samurai that often abuse and take advantage the villagers. What is the difference between raiders and protectors.

This is definitely a film that Kurosawa that centers the post World War II search for Japanese identity and what honor truly means. The Pyrrhic victories, the loss and the meaning of it all.
Is the moral of the story is that willpower is everything?

Man, and that final shot. Amazing.

You can kill the bandits one at a time but sooner or later you just gotta start pulling them off their horses all at once.

This film influenced quite a bit, but it most DEFINITELY did The Magnificent Seven, which is more or less a remake.