[1][2] The film is an origin-story offshoot of Gosha's 1963 Japanese television series of the same name, with the same lead actors, Tetsuro Tamba, Isamu Nagato, and Mikijirō Hira.

[1] Wandering ronin Sakon Shiba arrives at a mill where three peasants (Yohachi, Gosaku, and Jinbei) have kidnapped the local magistrate's daughter Aya.

A dispatch of the magistrate's soldiers arrive and propose clemency in exchange for Aya's return; the kidnappers refuse, stating that the hostage will not be freed until the regional lord agrees to lower taxes for the starving peasantry.

The magistrate, having grown increasingly anxious at the impending visit of the regional lord, orders most of his mercenaries to be killed by a pair of elite samurai, who become responsible for hunting down the outlaws and recovering the petition.

Ouchi, the best swordsman in the land, arrives in anticipation of the regional lord's visit and brings a large posse of samurai to attack the mill once again.

Shiba and Kikyo take on the massive force, and Sakura arrives in the middle of the battle, having decided that loyalty to his fellow samurai outweighs devotion to his new love.

[1] Bilge Ebiri, commissioned by Criterion Collection to write an essay on the film, wrote:[4] "Three Outlaw Samurai is a supremely confident big-screen debut, whose surface simplicity masks a scathing vision of society lurking beneath.

"Glenn Erickson, in an article for Turner Classic Movies published after the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release, wrote:[5] "[I]t's an impressively well-told story with interesting characters and a surprise in every scene.

Gosha and his writers Keiichi Abe and Eizaburo Shiba work clever games with the standard samurai archetypes: all are present, yet they refuse to accept their traditional roles.