Taking place in 1586[a] in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, it follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who seek to hire samurai to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

Since its release, it has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of greatest films, such as the BFI's Sight & Sound and Rotten Tomatoes polls.

Traveling to a nearby town, the villagers find Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, whom they see rescuing a young boy from a thief.

Katsushirō meets Shino, a farmer's daughter disguised as a boy by her father, and begins a relationship with her despite knowing the difference in their social classes prohibits it.

Rikichi, a troubled villager aiding the samurai, breaks down when he sees his wife, who was kidnapped and made a concubine during a previous raid.

However, Kikuchiyo's absence allows a handful of bandits to infiltrate his post and kill several farmers, and Gorobei is slain defending his position.

Afterward, Kambei, Katsushirō and Shichirōji stand in front of the funeral mounds of their comrades, watching the joyful villagers sing while planting their crops.

[18] Film critic Roger Ebert speculates in his review that the sequence introducing the leader Kambei (in which the samurai shaves off his topknot, a sign of honor among samurai, in order to pose as a monk to rescue a boy from a kidnapper) could be the origin of the practice, now common in action movies, of introducing the main hero with an undertaking unrelated to the main plot.

[citation needed] Kurosawa refused to shoot the peasant village at Toho Studios and had a complete set constructed at Tagata on the Izu Peninsula, Shizuoka.

[21] After three months of pre-production, it had 148 shooting days spread out over a year—four times the span covered in the original budget, which eventually came to almost half a million dollars.

Despite spending the entire day preparing, Nakai's hesitation to start shooting caused the sun to set and the scene wasn't shot.

[22] Through the creative freedom provided by the studio, Kurosawa made use of telephoto lenses, which were rare in 1954, as well as multiple cameras which allowed the action to fill the screen and place the audience right in the middle of it.

Initially Junzo Sasamori of the Ono-ha Itto-ryu worked with Sugino, but he was asked by the Ministry of Education to teach in Europe during production.

During filming, Kurosawa quickly earned a reputation with his crew as the "world's greatest editor" because of his practice of editing late at night throughout the shooting.

He described this as a practical necessity that is incomprehensible to most directors, who on major productions spent at least several months with their editors assembling and cutting the film after shooting is completed.

[25] Kenneth Turan notes that the long runtime "reflects the entirety of the agricultural year, from planting to gorgeous blossoming to harvesting.

"[17] Historian David Conrad notes that at the time of the movie's release, nearly half of the Japanese population was still employed in agriculture.

Although farm incomes were already rising as part of the Japanese economic miracle that would transform rural and urban lives in the 1950s and 60s, many of the village conditions depicted in the movie were still familiar to audiences in 1954.

Since 2006, the Criterion Collection's US releases have featured their own exclusive 2K restoration, whereas most others, including all non-US Blu-rays, have an older HD transfer from Toho in Japan.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Arguably Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, The Seven Samurai is an epic adventure classic with an engrossing story, memorable characters, and stunning action sequences that make it one of the most influential films ever made".

She praised Kurosawa's storytelling for "his deep perception of human nature" and "awareness that no two people are alike," his "sensitive, knowing direction" that "never lets audiences lose interest" in the plot, his talent for making the battle scenes and violent action "terrifically exciting to audiences" and his ability to naturally weave humor and romance between the serious action.

Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, compared it to High Noon[5] Film historian Peter Cowie quoted Kurosawa as saying, "Good westerns are liked by everyone.

Cowie continues this thought by saying, "That Seven Samurai can be so seamlessly transposed to an American setting underlines how carefully Kurosawa had assimilated this grammar.

Seven Samurai pachinko machines have sold 94,000 units in Japan as of March 2018[update],[72] equivalent to an estimated $470 million in gross revenue.

[23]: 42  Stephen Prince argues that considering samurai films and Westerns respond to different cultures and contexts, what Kurosawa found useful was not their content but rather he was inspired by their levels of syntactic movement, framing, form and grammar.

[83] Director Zack Snyder credited Seven Samurai as being an inspiration for his 2023 space opera film Rebel Moon, which shares the plot element of villagers assembling a team of warriors to defend their farming settlement.

[5][83] Along with remakes already listed above, other examples of the "Seven Samurai formula" can be seen in films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998),[83] The Dirty Dozen (1967), Star Wars (1977),[5] The Savage Seven (1968),[87] The 13th Warrior (1999), The Expendables, and Avengers,[88] as well as television series such as The A-Team and The Walking Dead.

[89][90] According to Prince, Kurosawa was "a mentor figure" to an emerging generation of American filmmakers, such as Spielberg and Lucas, who went on to develop the Hollywood blockbuster format in the 1970s.

[83] A visual element from Seven Samurai that has inspired a number of films is the use of rain to set the tone for action scenes; examples of this include Blade Runner (1982), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Matrix Revolutions.

[83] Sholay (1975), a "Curry Western" Indian film written by Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) and directed by Ramesh Sippy, has a plot that was loosely styled after Seven Samurai.