10 Best Movies Like 'Seven Samurai' (original) (raw)
Published Aug 6, 2023, 5:01 PM EDT
Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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What more is there to say about Seven Samurai that hasn't already been said? It's one of the greatest movies of all time, made by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time: Akira Kurosawa. It helped influence countless action movies released in its wake, and essentially perfected what a great action epic could be with its story of seven samurai warriors banding together to help defend a village and its inhabitants from violent bandits.
Due to its influence, there are plenty of movies that reuse certain story beats or tropes that Kurosawa's 1954 classic helped establish. As long as you're okay with a movie being not quite as good as Seven Samurai, the following movies are all compelling watches (it's natural, really, because perfection can hardly be improved). The following movies are all worth watching for anyone who enjoyed Seven Samurai and is hungry for more action, samurai-related or otherwise.
10 '13 Assassins' (2010)
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Takashi Miike's best work as a director is also one of 2010's best movies: 13 Assassins. It's easy to compare it to Seven Samurai from the title alone, and the similarities continue when it comes to the movie's action, structure, and setting, with both taking place in feudal Japan.
While Seven Samurai is all about defending a village, 13 Assassins sees its titular characters going on the attack, with their task involving the ambush and assassination of a tyrannical lord. It features team assembling, attack planning, and then an extended action sequence in its final act, structurally feeling similar to Seven Samurai while also being similarly exciting, not to mention considerably bloodier when it comes to its action scenes.
9 'The Magnificent Seven' (1960)
The cast of The Magnificent Seven
Image via United Artists
The Magnificent Seven is remarkably similar to Seven Samurai because it's a remake of the 1954 samurai classic. However, instead of being set in feudal Japan, The Magnificent Seven is set in the Old West, and though there's a team that still needs to assemble and defend a town, the people doing the defending here are gunslingers, rather than samurai warriors.
This 1960 film is also a little punchier and less of an epic, given its runtime clocks in at just over two hours, making it about 80 minutes shorter than Seven Samurai. It doesn't tell the comparable story in quite as compelling a manner, but it's still a very good Western, featuring plenty of great actors in the large cast (including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Eli Wallach), and having an amazing score by Elmer Bernstein.
8 '¡Three Amigos!' (1986)
While The Magnificent Seven took the premise of Seven Samurai and placed it in a Western setting while remaining a fairly serious movie, ¡Three Amigos! takes the broad strokes of the premise and makes the whole thing comedic. A group of villagers hires the titular trio, believing they're fearsome warriors who will help them defend their village.
As it turns out, they're actually just actors, which complicates things when the three realize they might be the only thing standing in the way of the fearsome bandits targeting the village. It's a fun and largely silly spoof of Westerns, but does so in a good-hearted way, showing how three actors can rise to the occasion and become the genuine heroes they get paid to portray on-screen.
7 'Ran' (1985)
Image via Toho
When it comes to Akira Kurosawa movies that might trump Seven Samurai, or at least come close to matching it, 1985's Ran is often brought up. It's fitting, because it's one of the great director's very best films, taking the tragic story of King Lear and transporting it to Japan during the 1500s, following an aging warlord who attempts to divide his kingdom up among his three sons.
While Seven Samurai certainly isn't shy about touching on darker themes and establishing genuine danger for its characters, Ran is a considerably darker affair. It contains spectacle and action, much like Seven Samurai, but the war sequences in Ran are a good deal more harrowing than the action sequences in Seven Samurai, making it another Kurosawa epic, sure, but also one of his bleakest movies.
6 'A Bug's Life' (1998)
Surprisingly enough, though Pixar's A Bug's Life is animated, family-friendly, doesn't contain samurai, and isn't set in Japan, it still has a premise that can be traced back to Seven Samurai. That 1954 movie led to The Magnificent Seven, which led to ¡Three Amigos!, which then finally led to A Bug's Life.
Whereas ¡Three Amigos! features a trio of actors needing to defend a village, A Bug's Life is about an insect circus troupe accidentally getting hired to defend an ant colony from a horde of vicious grasshoppers. It's a kid-friendly take on the familiar formula, and though it might not be one of Pixar's very best movies, it's charming and clever enough to hold up well, to the point where calling it a tad underrated might be fair.
5 'Yojimbo' (1961)
Image via Toho
Tatsuya Nakadai is a Japanese actor who had a brief role in Seven Samurai before going on to work with Akira Kurosawa on several future movies the director made. One of these was 1961's Yojimbo, which is another classic from the great Japanese filmmaker, and features Nakadai in the role of the lead antagonist, while Toshiro Mifune (who had a large role in Seven Samurai) plays the protagonist here.
It's a shorter and more small-scale movie than Seven Samurai, but is nevertheless one of Kurosawa's best. It also proved to be influential, with its premise about a lone wanderer playing two gangs off against each other in a small town being reused in other movies like 1964's A Fistful of Dollars and 1996's Last Man Standing.
4 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967)
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
If Seven Samurai is a team-up action movie set in feudal Japan, and The Magnificent Seven is a team-up action movie in the Old West, then The Dirty Dozen does something similar action movie-wise, but sets things in World War II. The titular dozen are all convicted criminals who'll have their sentences revoked if they agree to participate in a dangerous assassination mission.
Of course, the catch is that the mission is so risky that few - if any - are likely to make it out alive, meaning that after two acts of character-building and planning, it can be surprisingly sad to see the mission play out with various casualties. Thankfully, the action is also entertaining and appropriately explosive, making The Dirty Dozen a classic.
3 '47 Ronin' (1962)
Image via Toho
Another samurai-themed movie starring the great Toshiro Mifune, 47 Ronin (1962) is one of several film adaptations of a well-known event from Japan's history. It's about a group of leaderless samurai (ronin) planning revenge against those responsible for the death of their master, without whom their lives have become meaningless.
Running for almost 3.5 hours, it's a true epic, with its runtime equaling that of Seven Samurai. This makes it an obviously long and exhaustive watch, but it's a compelling story told well, features sparse but well-choreographed action, and has a huge cast with a clear amount of money being used on the film's impressive production value, too.
2 'The Tale of Zatoichi' (1962)
The Zatoichi movie series is one of the longest-running of all time, with a total of 26 movies being made with Shintarō Katsu in the lead, and a remake being released in 2003 with Takeshi Kitano in the titular role. The Tale of Zatoichi is the first of the original run of movies, and so naturally is the ideal starting point for newcomers.
The lead character is a blind masseuse/gambler/swordsman, and most of the films tell self-contained stories featuring him helping out various downtrodden people in 19th-century Japan. The first film, plus most of its sequels, are filled with great samurai action, emotional stories, and a fantastic lead character, making the entire series an essential one for any fan of great samurai movies.
Toshiro Mifune in The Hidden Fortress
Image via Toho
Several years after Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa made another action epic featuring swordplay and samurai, though this one was a little more adventure-focused and a touch more light-hearted. That film was The Hidden Fortress, and it told the story of two peasants getting involved in a large-scale conflict after they cross paths with a princess and a fearsome general in hiding.
It blends humor, action, and some more dramatic elements well, with everything adding up to make it one of Kurosawa's most satisfying and adventurous movies. Its story is a little looser than Seven Samurai's, but it's likely to scratch a similar itch for anyone who's after more action-packed samurai movie classics.