You probably don’t have to be American to know what Mount Rushmore is, but in case you don’t, it’s a monument that depicts the heads of four U.S. presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It’s also the location that North by Northwest concludes at, if you’re more of a film buff than a history buff. With Mount Rushmore’s depicted presidents, if they’re the four most significant presidents in history (we’re not getting political here, but those behind the monument must’ve felt that way at the time), then a collection of other things being called “the Mount Rushmore of x” means that they’re possibly the four most significant of whatever “x” is. Hence, the Mount Rushmore of samurai movies. This involves highlighting four of them that are instrumental to the genre.
Historical significance is being taken into account here, more than it might if one were to pick the “four best samurai movies” in history. Also, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is not being considered. It’s fantastic, and is sort of a samurai movie, but it’s more of a homage, and further, it’s a homage to some other genres/types of movies, too. Putting Kill Bill: Vol. 1 on this Mount Rushmore would’ve been a bit like sticking the leader of a nation other than the U.S. on Mount Rushmore because they embodied the spirit of a U.S. president without actually being one. Maybe a cinematic comparison would potentially cause controversy, during the picking of the Mount Rushmore of Westerns, by including one or two Spaghetti Westerns, even if the genre is typically (and inherently) an American one. So, historical value and being truly part of the genre are important here. If this wasn’t the right way to tackle things, uh, no one’s sorry. Too bad. These samurai movies were all made in Japan, which is where most samurai movies have been made to date, and where the majority of great ones have also been made, too. They’re all older, all influential, and all hold up amazingly well. They’re ranked below from great to greatest.
4
‘Lady Snowblood’ (1973)
The one color samurai movie here, Lady Snowblood is also noteworthy nowadays for being massively influential on the aforementioned Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Like that film, there is a second part, but it’s not really a second volume, and is instead a somewhat underwhelming sequel. So, Lady Snowblood is Lady Snowblood. You can take or leave the sequel, since the story here feels very self-contained. There’s a young girl who’s trained to be a killing machine, so she can avenge the murdered family she never got to know, and as it turns out, there are tons of people responsible for the murders, and so she has to kill a bunch of them. There’s your source of drama and action, and since criminals were responsible for the murders that kick-started the plot, Lady Snowblood also gets to function a bit like a crime movie.
Lady Snowblood has got a B-movie premise, but an A-grade presentation, or maybe an A-grade style, if that makes sense.
It’s fairly bleak stuff overall, and violent in a way that still has some impact all these decades later, and yet Lady Snowblood is also quite beautiful on a visual front. There’s something about the presentation that really elevates what might otherwise be a fairly standard samurai flick, because on paper, it might sound like a bit of a B-movie. It’s got a B-movie premise, but an A-grade presentation, or maybe an A-grade style, if that makes sense. It takes the fourth place slot here because it was hard to single out one of the Zatoichi or Lone Wolf and Cub movies, because the latter is a decently lengthy series, and the former is a very long one. There are amazing movies in both those series that might deserve a spot here if Mount Rushmore allowed for the placement of six presidents, or six movies, for present purposes, but Lady Snowblood feels like a more complete and significant film on its own, so here it is, and there it goes.
3
‘The Sword of Doom’ (1966)
The central character in Lady Snowblood was ruthless, and maybe not typically heroic, but she seems like a saint compared to Ryunosuke, who’s the central character in The Sword of Doom. He’s a swordsman who lacks a moral center, and so he takes on numerous jobs, seemingly wanting to satiate his bloodlust, but he never does. Picture Uncut Gems, but instead of being about a guy who can’t stop making massive gambles and getting in increasingly bad debt, it’s about a murderous swordsman who just can’t stop killing people and committing other acts of violence. It’s a grim watch, and, like Uncut Gems, The Sword of Doom seems to get a little more harrowing with each passing scene.
Like with Lady Snowblood, the level of violence here is quite alarming for a film of its age. The Sword of Doom has been outdone in terms of bloodshed since, sure, but it’s a movie that’s now 60 years old, and it’s more intense with its depiction of violence than, say, Bonnie and Clyde, which was infamously violent for its time, and released one year after The Sword of Doom. It’s almost as dark as samurai films get, with maybe the next one mentioned being the only film that truly outdoes it as far as hopelessness is concerned. And that film is…
2
‘Harakiri’ (1962)
…Harakiri. You can tell you’re probably not going to be in for a good or nice time when you watch a movie called The Sword of Doom, and the same can be said (or thought) when you enter into a movie called Harakiri. It’s about a man who wants to commit the titular act, which involves disemboweling oneself. There’s no nice way to put it, really. It’s a form of ritualized suicide, and Harakiri, the movie, is mostly about the lead-up to that act. The man has a lengthy story about why he wants to commit harakiri (sometimes called seppuku, too), and so much of Harakiri is a series of flashbacks about his life, and who he holds responsible for the unfortunate things that befell both him and much of his family.
It’s certainly a patiently paced movie, and though the flashbacks do eventually lead to some action scenes, the action is brief and brutal, so if you want extravagant or exciting/fun action scenes, that’s not really what you get here. The focus is on the drama, and Harakiri is indeed dramatic and intense throughout. It’s remarkably well-structured, shot, and acted, and the stuff about it that feels especially effective is also, in all likelihood, timeless. People who saw this back in 1962 were likely shaken up by the whole thing, and it remains hard to watch nowadays without being unnerved by some of its grislier and more hard-hitting scenes. Still, that makes it impressive as well, and even if you could argue that it’s a deconstruction of the samurai genre more so than it is an outright samurai movie (they do typically have a bit more action, it has to be conceded), it still feels like a vital enough (and overall perfect) darker take on the genre, so it’s worthy of being here. It makes the cut (pun unintended, but kept in regardless), for the samurai Mount Rushmore.
1
‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)
Yes, only one Akira Kurosawa movie is being included on the Mount Rushmore of samurai films, but there are so many that feel worthy of honorable mentions (especially Ran, if that counts as a samurai movie, and Yojimbo). But Seven Samurai is the quintessential samurai film, both of Kurosawa’s efforts and of the genre overall. It did not invent the samurai genre, though maybe it helped redefine it, or at least it pushed things forward considerably, and suggested a new gold standard for this kind of movie. Maybe it’s even a standard that hasn’t been equaled, even if you get the feeling that more than a few samurai movies have been influenced by it. It’s also an ambitious and important movie within the action genre more broadly, and it’s not hard to see its influence on the likes of The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven (okay, that one is a remake), or pretty much any movie that’s about assembling a team and then preparing to undertake some kind of high-stakes and/or dangerous task.
That’s what you get here, and it’s all incredibly well-paced for a movie of its age, and for a movie that ends up running for well over three hours. Seven Samurai is a surprisingly effortless watch, and one of those indisputably great movies where everything feels fine-tuned and in just the right place. To go over all the good things in Seven Samurai would mean being here all day, or else typing like another 10,000 words, and even all those words might not be enough. It’s about as perfect as epic movies get, and is also ideal by the standards of the action genre and, ultimately, the samurai genre, too. If you only ever find yourself able to watch one samurai movie, for whatever unfortunate reason (please try and re-negotiate with whoever imposed that on you; there are at least four good ones, as this ranking illustrates, that you’d benefit from watching), then you might as well make it Seven Samurai.