A 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s epic master piece Seven Samurai is now available for streaming. You can watch it on:
- Max has what appears to be the 4K version, thought not stated that anywhere. However the image is crisp and there are no dust or scratches visible.
- Apple TV has the movie with the 4K icon
- Amazon prime video has it also - no mention of it being the 4k version - however it is linked from Criterion
If your haven’t seen Seven Saurai - it significantly influenced Hollywood cinema, specifically the Western film genre, most notably with the Hollywood remake “The Magnificent Seven” by adapting the core themes of honor, duty, and protecting the vulnerable to an American setting. You should add it to your watch list.
From Roger Bert’s review:
Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” (1954) is not only a great film in its own right, but the source of a genre that would flow through the rest of the century. The critic Michael Jeck suggests that this was the first film in which a team is assembled to carry out a mission–an idea which gave birth to its direct Hollywood remake, “The Magnificent Seven,” as well as “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Dirty Dozen” and countless later war, heist and caper movies. Since Kurosawa’s samurai adventure “Yojimbo” (1960) was remade as “A Fistful of Dollars” and essentially created the spaghetti Western, and since this movie and Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” inspired George Lucas’ “Star Wars” series, it could be argued that this greatest of filmmakers gave employment to action heroes for the next 50 years, just as a fallout from his primary purpose.
Here’s the trailer: