The Seven Samurai (1954)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.

While it was sometimes difficult to select my favorite film from a great director, I had no problem choosing a favorite Kurosawa film. This classic is four hours long (with an intermission) but once it gets going, the time flies. Shimura plays the leader of a ragtag band of samurai (there are seven of them, hence the title) who are hired by a village to protect the people from the bandits. The first half of the film consists of the band of samurai being assembled and preparing for battle, while the second half is almost entirely made up of battle scenes between the samurai and villagers and the bandits. Despite its great length, Kurosawa never wastes a minute, establishing not only his characters (Shimura's quiet authority and Mifune's strutting comic machismo stick out in the memory) but also the strategies of battle, so that when the fighting begins everything is completely comprehensible. Finally, Kurosawa casts a critical eye on the Japanese tradition of sacrifice, as the samurai (who were hired for a small amount of grain) sustain heavy losses in battle because, well, that's their lot in life. Even after seeing some of the many films influenced by this one, the original still holds up.