Director: Akira Kurosawa, PG, 1980
Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki
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Out of fashion and out of cash in his native Japan, Kurosawa had not made a film for five years when Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas came to call. The result, as the two rising American stars sought to repay their debt to the master, was a tale of feudal warlords battling for supremacy in 16th-century Japan. Yet whereas earlier films, such as The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, had set out purely to entertain, here the tone is more meditative.
On the extras, executive producers Lucas and Coppola explain that neither Star Wars nor The Godfather would have existed without Kurosawa’s earlier samurai films.
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DVD extras
Commentary by the Kurosawa expert Stephen Prince, Coppola and Lucas interview, Japanese documentary, storyboard features, trailers
NIGEL KENDALL