Name me one thing in this world cooler than samurai. Jetpacks? No. World Peace? Hardly. A coupon for free ice cream? Close, but not close enough. The samurai has captivated hearts and minds since olden times, and here are the ten best samurai movies that do the warriors justice.
10. Harakiri
The best film of Masaki Kobayashi’s oeuvre, Harakiri tells the story of ronin Hanshirō Tsugumo, who is attempting to seek revenge on a feudal lord before finally committing seppuku himself. What’s seppuku? An elaborate form of ritual suicide where a person disembowels themselves before a friend cuts their head off with a sword to end their misery. Tsugumo’s son suffered the worst version of this fate, with the feudal lord in question making him commit the act with a bamboo sword. It’s one of the most brutal scenes in the genre, and the movie only gets worse from there. If you’re looking for a moody, melancholy film about honor and vengeance, this is it.
9. Yojimbo
Yojimbo was made by Akira Kurosawa, the grandaddy of Japanese cinema (whose name will certainly appear again on this list). It tells the story of the titular Yojimbo, a ronin who convinces two businessmen to fight each other in a gang war. Heard of the anime Kengan Ashura? Where corporations fight it out in with proxy warriors in order to gain power over each other? This movie is where they got it from (and history, of course). The standout aspect of this film is easily the performance of the legendary Toshiro Mifune, who plays Yojimbo himself. Action and intrigue combine to make one banger of a film.
8. Throne of Blood
Ever heard of MacBeth? The tragedy by that English writer Willy Whatshisname? Throne of Blood is Akira Kurosawa’s (hallowed be his name) interpretation of the play. The plots are the same at their core: a loyal samurai warrior is tempted by an evil spirit to follow the path of ambition while wandering the wreckage of a battlefield. The way it’s told, however, is entirely different. The vibe abounds in Throne of Blood. It’s chilling, cinematic, and all-together totally eerie. In the sprit of the theatrical source material, the performances in Throne of Blood are heavily influenced by the highly stylized gestures of traditional Japanese kabuki theatre. Willy Whatshisname would be proud.
7. Kagemusha
With a name like “Shadow Warrior” how could you go wrong? Akira Kurasawa strikes again with Kagemusha, a hallucinatory story about the warlord Shingen, who, when mortally wounded in his quest to rule Japan, asks his body double to take his place and continue his legacy. The body double adopts the mannerisms of his late master, fooling the rest of the lord’s retainers, and eventually he himself begins to become Shingen mentally. Naturally, the story can only end one way, and it isn’t well, but the process of watching a man upon whom greatness is unwillingly thrust carry out his duty to the bitter end is a beautiful and tragic tale. And the visuals? Forget about it. It’s a rare full-color Akira Kurosawa work, rendered in stunning detail.
6. Rashomon
Rashomon is a bit like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in its storytelling. It’s a singular narrative told from the point of view of a cast of many. As the action progresses, the story begins dividing itself into fractals until you’re left with multiple, differing points of view about what exactly went on. Who to trust? Who to believe? Every narrator here is as unreliable as Holden Caulfield! It’s the story of a bandit who is accused of murdering a samurai and raping his wife, who is taken to trial to prove his innocence or guilt. Things get especially complicated when a medium is summoned to testify for the dead samurai, who is reaching for the slain man’s truth from beyond the grave. I’m not sure that’s admissible in court, but it’s thrilling cinema.
5. The Hidden Fortress
You ever noticed how Star Wars is inspired quite a bit by Japanese films? The tense, methodically choreographed lightsaber battles? The epic scope? The Stormtrooper helmets that look like samurai headgear of old? The Hidden Fortress is where George Lucas got the idea for it all. The film is about two bumbling civilians who get caught up in a war zone looking for gold, and soon find themselves making enemies on both sides of the fight. One could argue that this Kurosawa film also served as inspiration for Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, where a group of ne’er-do-wells are searching for a lost treasure amid the Civil War. The Hidden Fortress is the Pinterest cinema moodboard to end all moodboards.
4. Lady Snowblood
Finally, someone else besides Kurosawa can get a little glory. Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood is one of the few samurai movies that features a woman as a lead character. The titular Lady Snowblood is a woman named Yuki (a Japanese word that can mean “snow”), who is engaged in a Kill Bill-style quest for vengeance against the men who slaughtered her family. Or rather, The Bride is on a Lady Snowblood-style quest for revenge in Kill Bill. After all, the latter was inspired by the former. The stylish film is beautifully shot, featuring the violent, colorful, heightened visuals that made enough of an impression on Quentin Tarantino to make a whole film about the same story.
3. Gate of Hell
Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell asks “what does it mean to be a good man?” There are many things good men do, but they do NOT force married women into conspiring to kill their own husbands. That’s a big no-no. And yet, it’s exactly what the supposedly honorable samurai Morito does. After falling in love with a woman named Kesa, the samurai coerces her into plotting against her beloved husband Wataru. It’s essentially a film about toxic masculinity. The hardened warrior Morito is seen as what a man should be in comparison with the soft and gentle Wataru, but the film soon shows that Morito is the monster despite his seeming virtues.
2. Ran
Akira Kurosawa just loves Shakespeare, so much so that he adapted King Lear into cinema form, as well! Ran follows the plot of Shakeapeare’s tragedy about elderly, ailing warlord Ichimonji Hidetora, who is attempting to divide his wealth among his three songs. Like Lear’s s daughters, the kids just can’t get along. Infighting abounds as the warlord slowly watches his life’s work crumble beneath him.
Hidetora is driven insane by the ruination of his family, and his legacy is left in shambles. In classic Kurosawa fashion, the film is epic and scope and visually stunning. They burn down a whole damn castle just for the perfect shot, that’s a level of extra that every great filmmaker should aspire to be.
1. Seven Samurai
Seven Samurai. The legend. The blueprint. The greatest of all. The story of seven wandering warriors hired by a poor village to save them from a roving bandit horde is one of the most seminal films ever created. The film would inspire the American remake The Magnificent Seven, where a group of cowboys are contracted to save a frontier town from an outlaw gang in the Old West. Kurosawa’s work is an absolute masterpiece.
While epic in scope, as many of the director’s works are, the film manages to maintain an intimate relationship between the audience and its heroic cast of characters. You feel like you have skin in the game watching these men fight to defend those in need. While the samurai genre is often mired in the quagmire of moral quandaries, this film is provides a satisfying tale of good guys vs. bad guys where the good guys, through no small sacrifice, come out on top.
