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- The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) Denjiro Okochi steals the show in this highly entertaining period film. Okochi plays the leader of a group of samurai who disguise themselves as monks in order to sneak their lord through enemy lines.
- The Most Beautiful (1944) By 1944, it was apparent Japan would lose World War II. Despite facing imminent defeat, Japanese filmmakers were encouraged to make “spiritist” films: movies showing ordinary civilians dedicated to the national cause.
- Sanjuro (1962) A clever and amusing follow-up to Kurosawa’s previous film, Yojimbo (1961). In the original, Toshiro Mifune’s wisecracking samurai pitted two imbecilic gangs against one another to wipe them both out; here, he takes a side, trying to help besieged (rather, naive) people take a stand against their persecutors.
- Scandal (1950) Even lesser Kurosawa films tend to have fascinating components and scenes of tremendous power. Scandal, a critique of yellow journalism in postwar Japan, isn’t quite as searing as its director intended, yet it still has much to offer through its plethora of intriguing characters — most notably a weak-willed lawyer played by that wonderful actor Takashi Shimura.
A ranking of all thirty films directed by Akira Kurosawa, presented in order of best to worst.
- 10 Dersu Uzala
- 9 The Hidden Fortress
- 8 Red Beard
- 7 Throne of Blood
- 6 High and Low
- 5 Ran
- 4 Ikiru
- 3 Yojimbo
- 2 Rashomon
- 1 Seven Samurai
An Explorer Venturing To Siberia And Starts An Unlikely Friendship
Kurosawa only made five movies after the little-known Dersu Uzala, winner of the 1976 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The story follows the title character, a trapper sent by Russian armed forces to explore the uncharted Sikhote-Alin region of Siberia. Along the way, Dersu (Maksim Munzuk) forges an unlikely friendship with a grizzled hunter named Arsenev (Yuriy Solomon). Made toward the twilight of his illustrious career, Dersu Azala is Kurosawa at his most contemplative and sou...
Two Peasants Must Escort A Princess Through Dangerous Lands
The Hidden Fortress bears so many similarities to George Lucas' Star Wars that some have suggested the Hollywood movie ripped off the Japanese original.The movie centers ontwo peasants in Feudal Japan who are ordered to escort a princess and a general through a perilous territory as enemies close in.Driven by their greed for gold as a reward, the two peasants have no clue how important their charges are, which leads to an intense battle of wits and weaponry, betrayal, and redemption. While th...
A Stern Doctor Begins Mentoring A Young Intern
While he is one of the great action movie directors of all time, Kurosawa also delivered some beautiful intimate movies. In his final collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa tells one of his most relatable human tales inRed Beard, the three-hour magnum opus character study. The story follows Kyojo Niide (Mifune), an irascible doctor in a small Japanese town who forges a personal and professional bond with his new medical trainee, Dr. Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama). As Kurosawa's final black-and-w...
A Loose Adaptation Of Macbeth Set In Feudal Japan
Throne of Blood isa loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth set in feudal Japan. Toshiro Mifune stars as a grizzled war general named Washizu who goes to treacherous lengths to turn his wife's vision to become the top ruler into reality. All of Shakespeare's hefty themes of tragic betrayal, craven ambition, and inevitable vengeance are on display. Yet Kurosawa adds his own commentary on the story that is insightful and suitable for the tale. The eerie labyrinthine forest that serves...
A Businessman Faces A Moral Conundrum Following A Kidnapping
A perfect crime story and character study told in three precise acts, High and Low shows that Akira Kurosawa is as effective at modern storytelling as he is with period pieces.The moral quandary concerns Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), a top executive at the Yokohama shoe company, who is about to close an important business deal. However, when his son is kidnapped, he agrees to use the money to pay for the ransom, only to realize it was his son's friend who was kidnapped. Gondo is left in an im...
An Epic Retelling Of King Lear
Another movie that is loosely inspired by Shakespeare's work, Ran is one of Kurosawa's most personal passion projects.The story is his own take on King Lear and concerns an aging warlord and land baron Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Hidetora bestows the imperial power on his three sons, completely blindsided by their cruel corruption, deadly deceit, and craven betrayal. While the end of Kurosawa's work in black-and-white is something seen as a shift in the quality of his movies, Ran pr...
A Dying Man Attempts To Embrace Life For The First Time
Ikiru is arguably the most emotionally resonant of Akira Kurosawa's movies. Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is a career social worker who is suddenly diagnosed with late-stage cancer, which forces him to take stock of his life, find existential meaning, and press on in the face of unfathomable fear. Given less than one year to live, what makes the story so profoundly and emotionally painful is the mundane repetition of Kanji's daily life at his job, to which he dedicated 30 years of his life...
A Wandering Swordsman Ignites A War Between Rival Gangsters
While Toshiro Mifune would reprise his now-iconic role of Sanjuro one year later, 1961's Yojimbo reigns supreme as a hugely influential movie from Kurosawa. Yojimbo (which translates to "Bodyguard") refers to the wily nomadic samurai who manipulates two ruthless gangsters at odds with each other in 19th-century Japan. One of Kurosawa's biggest commercial hits in Japan, Yojimbo influenced several other beloved movies, including Sergio Leonne'sA Fistful of Dollars. Violent, philosophical, and t...
The Same Crime Is Retold From Various Perspectives
Once again, as brilliant as Kurosawa is as a director, his talents as a screenwriter should never be overlooked.Notorious for shifting character perspectives and retelling the same story events from multiple points of view, Rashomon is among Kurosawa's most inventive and oft-imitated masterworks. Adhering to the old adage that there is more than one side to every story, few movies explore the veracity of the he said, she said dynamic likeRashomon. When a bride is brutally assaulted and her hu...
A Band Of Samurai Protect A Small Village
Famously remade as The Magnificent Seven in 1960, the story of a 16th-century Japanese village marauded by violent bandits avenged by seven sword-swinging samurai is deeply ingrained in storytelling mythology. With visceral action and compelling characters, Seven Samurai is Kurosawa at his sharpest.The basic premise of the story does not do justice to the landmark filmmaking achievement of Kurosawa's singular style. Using multiple cameras for the first time in his career, the film defined mod...
- Colin Mccormick
- Ikiru. To be the greatest movie ever directed by Akira Kurosawa also means being one of the greatest movies ever made. Such words may seem like hollow hyperbole, but in the case of "Ikiru," it's appropriate.
- Ran. When plays are adapted for film, a common complaint is that these adaptations never feel big enough. Some just seem like they're recorded performances of stage plays.
- Seven Samurai. Trying to write something new about "Seven Samurai" feels like as much of a fool's errand as finding a bad performance from Takashi Shimura.
- Drunken Angel. One of the many striking visual details in "Drunken Angel" is a sump located in the village that Dr. Sanada (Takashi Shimura) calls home.
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Senior Author
- 'Seven Samurai' (1954) Letterboxd Rating: 4.5/5. A revolutionary action epic that's aged like wine in the nearly 70 years since its release, Seven Samurai is an undeniable classic.
- 'High and Low' (1963) Letterboxd Rating: 4.5/5. Few thrillers that are as old as High and Low hold up and remain exciting the same way High and Low does.
- 'Ikiru' (1952) Letterboxd Rating: 4.4/5. Ikiru is likely Akira Kurosawa's most bittersweet and moving film. It has a simple story that delivers a wide array of emotions, centering on a bureaucrat whose perspective on life is dramatically changed when his doctor tells him he's terminally ill and won't have long to live.
- 'Ran' (1985) Letterboxd Rating: 4.4/5. While Throne of Blood saw Akira Kurosawa adapting Macbeth and The Bad Sleep Well (1960) saw him loosely adapting Hamlet, with 1985's Ran, the great director set his sights on Shakespeare's play King Lear.
Apr 26, 2024 · Akira Kurosawa is frequently referred to as “Emperor”—hyperbolic, sure, but when it comes to the director’s staggeringly influential, detailed and versatile body of work, the truth catches up...
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May 16, 2022 · Seven Samurai is Akira Kurosawa's best film for all that it contains, and serves – rightfully so – as a masterclass in filmmaking. Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. His films have a generosity of spirit, even when they are about killers and conquerors.
