Twelve years after Captain Renault gave the order to round up the usual suspects in Casablanca, Akira Kurosawa answered the call, only his seven suspects are samurai and they are quite an unusual lot. His Seven Samurai is an epic film whose scope has rarely been matched or even succeeded. Influential, innovative, and introspective, it gives us everything we love about the movies. Thrills and excitement, laughs and grief. Bandits, and peasants, and samurai – oh my!
Long before Captain America brandished Thor’s mighty hammer and said the words “Avengers Assemble!” Kurosawa made it the thematic focus of what was then Japan’s most expensive film production. Seven Samurai is 200 minutes of awesome, and at no point should you be checking the time or looking at videos on TikTok.
The story is simple enough. A farming village threatened by bandits decides to hire samurai to stop them from stealing their yearly harvest. A seasoned rōnin in a nearby town, Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura), reluctantly agrees to recruit the others. In doing so we spend an hour assembling the team, getting to know each one, and their reasons for joining up. By the time Kambei has finished picking the others we have our leader, a planner, the leader’s close friend, a skilled swordsman, the charmer/comic relief (played by Kurosawa favorite Toshiro Mifune), the reluctantly untested, and the wild card.
Like Kurosawa, I make mad films, ‘kay, I don’t make films
But if I did they’d have a Samurai
– Lyrics from “One Week” (Barenaked Ladies)
When Seven Samurai celebrated its 70th anniversary last year, I helped promote the film’s 4K restoration with seven fun facts. Curiously enough, while Kurosawa is closely associated with samurai films (see also Yojimbo, The Hidden Fortress, Ran), this was his first true samurai feature. It was originally conceived as the day in the life of a samurai who would ultimately be a disgrace and commit seppuku (ritual suicide). Kurosawa along with his co-writers Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni scrapped that idea as well as one involving five samurai battles based on famous Japanese swordsmen. Probably the most interesting fact I came across is that when the film was finally presented in the U.S. in 1956 from Columbia Pictures it was titled The Magnificent Seven. This would be the same title United Artists would give to John Sturges’ American western in 1960.
As attention spans lapse and modern action cinema relies on visual chaos and frenetic editing, Seven Samurai is both a catalyst for what’s to come and a reprieve from it all. It’s not action for the sake of action. The reaction and emotions derived are momentous and eventful. Unlike Avengers: Age of Ultron introducing the Quicksilver character to the franchise only to have him be the movie’s sacrificial lamb. Further, Kurosawa’s restraint behind the camera and knowing when to use wide, middle, and close visuals through multi-camera setups shows an adherence in editing in camera and with purpose instead of intent.
When movie lovers become cinephiles and start to branch out beyond the cineplex and discover films on physical media, The Criterion Criterion becomes part of the discourse. So it should come as no surprise that Seven Samurai is the film I most associate with the label. Apparently, I’m in good company. Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve visited the famed Criterion Closet and had this to say when he picked it up.
Making its arrival to 4K UHD and boasting a new restoration, the new Criterion release carries over all the extras found on the 2010 Blu-ray, including two commentaries: one from 1988 with Japanese film expert Michael Jeck, and a roundtable panel from 2006 with critics and scholars. Also featured is “Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create,” a fifty-minute documentary containing interviews with Seven Samurai co-writer Hashimoto and several other Kurosawa collaborators.
A deep dive of Kurosawa’s filmography can be heard in “My Life in Cinema: Akira Kurosawa,” a two-hour long dialogue from 1993 between him and fellow filmmaker Nagisa Oshima (Death By Hanging; Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence). Finally, the Criterion-produced “Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences” provides an in depth history at how samurai have been portrayed in art and how it would influence Kurosawa’s epic.
One quick note about the restoration. For those wanting the best visual quality of Seven Samurai you might want to check out the British Film Institute’s release. It has an a High Dynamic Range 10 Media Profile (HDR10, for short) transfer whereas Criterion’s only has Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). Since a majority of 4K UHD titles are region free, the BFI release will play in most 4K players around the globe. But to watch the extras, you would need a region-free player.
Switching gears we have David Fincher’s Se7en, which I like to call his second-best first impression. The acclaimed music video director made his foray into feature films being micromanaged by 20th Century Fox while making Alien³. It was a horrible experience and Fincher was almost a one and done with Hollywood. Until he was sent a script about a serial killer and elaborately staged murders. New Line Cinema, the House that Freddy Krueger Built, produced and distributed a bleak, investigative procedural that would become one of 1995’s most unexpected hits with more than $327M grossed worldwide.
Thirty years later, the film still cooks. You could release this in theaters today and Gen Z’ers would lose their damn minds. The gut-punch ending packs a wallop, for sure, but the more times I return to Fincher’s signature work, the greater respect I have for its character nuance. I love seeing the maturation and turns between a veteran detective nearing retirement and his newly transferred partner.
William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is old and alone, and even-tempered. David Mills (Brad Pitt) is young and married, and impetuous. Their first crime scene is our entrance into a macabre investigation festooned with iconography that will make your skin crawl. The killer’s MO is using the seven deadly sins as part of a violent crusade against moral decay. In an unnamed city of no promising future, to which Sommerset has long realized. Though he does retain some semblance that humanity can prevail. Mills is more optimistic until an ending that validates the final piece of the killer’s crusade.
After its worldwide success, Se7en would ignite the serial killer subgenre in film and on television. It would inspire everything from Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 neo-noir crime procedural Memories of Murder – which should be watched in tandem with David Fincher’s Zodiac – to 2022’s The Batman. Se7en also establishes the tone from the start with one of the great opening credits sequences set to Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer.” If NIN sets the mood, Darius Khondji’s photography and lighting set the look. Khondji and Fincher evoke an intimate realism in a godforsaken place. We have Rob Bottin of RoboCop and The Thing handling the practical effects, Michael Kaplan’s (Blade Runner) costumes, and Arthur Max’s production design (his first credit as a prod designer!) adding to the film’s artistic vision of a city in a state of decay.
As Fincher’s Hollywood do-over, Se7en remains one of his greatest directing achievements. While I tend to hold Zodiac in higher regard, it’s basically splitting hairs. Somerset and Mills are my favorite movie cops. Their initial hostility is eventually offset by each other’s fatalism in pursuing the killer. Thankfully, writer Andrew Kevin Walker scribbled scenes where the movie isn’t just a plot-driven potboiler. The intimate moments with Somerset being invited to dinner by Mills’s wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) offer optimism. Their growth is in direct opposition by John Doe (Kevin Spacey), the suspected killer who is numb to everything around him. Doe is not cocksure, unlike Mills, but is enlivened to taunt both men. But it’s subterfuge of what is to unfold. The shocking climax is still unrelenting, and unseals its fate as a stone cold classic.
Fifteen years after its Blu-ray release, Warner releases Se7en on 4K UHD. The good news is the visual presentation is notch. Not quite top notch, because the 2010 Blu-ray was already stellar. So the upgrade isn’t as noticeable. The bad news is the sound is a downgrade. We are going from a 7.1 channel mix to 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Not understanding the logic with that. But the base in Howard Shore’s score retains its heavy drones and the city cacophony is very strong.
Warner has ported over a majority of the extras found on prior home releases. We get four audio tracks; deleted scenes (including the original ending that did not test well); production stills and reproduced photos of John Doe’s victims and crime scenes; and a series of brief behind-the-scenes featurettes. The only omissions appear to be a Telecine Gallery, the film’s theatrical trailer, and three, quick technical features dealing with audio mastering. So if retaining extras matter, you better hold on to the 2010 Blu-ray release.
Overall: Two masterworks from two master filmmakers. You’ll be in seventh heaven having both in your movie collection.
Seven Samurai
Grade: A+
Se7en
Grade: A
