Akira Kurosawa is for me amongst Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse & Sadao Yamanaka one of the 5 best Japanese film directors i know. Outside Japan Kurosawa is out of these 5 the best known Japanese director thanks to praises being sung by the Western film industry. He made many unforgettable movie jewels such as The Idiot based on one of Dostojevski's famous novels but this is his samurai masterpiece. The American western The Magnificent Seven is an adaption & based on this movie for your info and is in fact a very good movie but this is the real deal you should watch. This is one of the many classic movies every classic movie fan must have seen. This BD version is the full length 207 minutes version while way back then when the film was released in theatres in the West you could only see a version which was one hour shorter. The story is about a village of farmers who seek protection for their harvest from bandits by hiring samurai. they succeed to hire seven samurai however the seventh one is in fact not a real samurai but thanks to his strong believe & efforts he is considered as one of them. this role is played by the magnificent Toshiro Mifune who is one of the best acting performers thanks to the humor he ads to the movie. Always a joy to watch & hear are the comments of Tony Rayns who actually met way back then Akira Kurosawa. This BD has my highest possible recommendation.