Samurai (the great Toshiro Mifune) having lost his master discovers an utterly corrupt town and uses both his cunning and his sword to clean it up. The filmmaking is marvelously austere, yet in its sudden bursts of action electrifying, in its stern morality sobering, in the blackness of its comedy often quite delicious. Kurosawa knew and loved American westerns, but deploying their conventions in feudal Japan he utterly transformed them—to our utter fascination and delight.—R.S.