Since there are over 300 reviews of this magnificent film already posted, I would like to discuss some aspects of this film that are rarely discussed.The first of these two themes is the various roles and attributes of the heroic male. The second of the two themes is the depiction of classism and a stratified society.However, before I comment on these two themes I must praise Kurosawa, the Director, for the incredible battle scenes. The level of realism, chaos, and accident is very high, giving the viewer a superb look into battle. As the layout of the village is drawn and repeatedly shown to the viewer in Kambei's maps, we fully understand the battleground and the rationale for defending specific sites and barrocading others. We understand Kambei's master strategy and its execution. We understand when it goes wrong or astray and we watch Kambei immediate correct the situation if possible. We see beserk men hacking at each other rather than an over stylized ballet posing as a battle scene. These battle scenes are masterful and rare. That being said, I would like to discuss the two themes I outlined above.First, we see three distinct ways or paths of the hero in this film. We see the character Kyuzo, the master swordsman, a completely skilled killing machine, swift as a scorpion and calm as a cool breeze. He is a craftsman, sure of his talent and skill. He is also serene, having obviously attained a detachment from emotion and day-to-day worries. He takes his skill seriously, as seen in his first scene where a dueling partner progresses from sticks to swords and Kyuzo kills him within seconds. A second revealing scene is the great sequence where wildman Kikuchoiyo and steel-nerved Kyuzo become a team to track and kill the three bandit scouts. The third scene is wisely left to our immagination. Kyuzo learns that three of the bandits hidden in the forrest around the village has a rifle. Kyuzo leaves the compound alone in the fog of night and many hours later returns with a rifle in hand. He hands the rifle to Kambei and goes calmly to sleep. We see that Kyuzo, though a self contained killing machine, can work in partnership with a wildly unpredictable partner as well as follow instructions from the wise leader, Kambei. Kyuzo is seen in all cultures and in all times. He is the totally proficient warrior. He is the warrior that all younger warriors wish to emulate. But he is incomplete because he lacks one virtue, purpose beyond himself. Yet he is wise enough to be persuaded by Kambei and to follow Kambei's wise direction. It is purposefully ironic that Kyuzo is shot in the back by one of the three rifles in the film, since no one can beat him face to face with sword technology.The character of Kikuchoiyo, the wild man who wishes to become a Samurai, the man who can not contain his energy or emotion, the force of nature, is an incredible character. He is the exact opposite of Kyuzo, the serene killing machine. He has little control of his emotions, is spontaneous and rage driven. Yet his character undergoes the most transformation in the film. He goes from being a lying drunken bully imposter to a force of great good, primarily through the strategic hands off mentoring of Kambei. We learn that he is not from a Samurai family but is the orphan of farmers killed by bandits. Kikuchoiyo first gives us a hint as to his background when he informs the samurai that farmers always have hidden resources on which to call, this secrecy being necessary for thier survival. However when the bandits attack the old miller and his family in the grist mill, Kikuchoiyo comes to the rescue and saves a baby boy from the dying arms of its mother. Kikuchoiyo breaks down in mid-action, holding the child in a stream with warfare surrounding him, and wails that this exact thing happened to him as a child. In the Jungian sense, Kikuchoiyo reclaimed his orphan child self at this point, he saves a real child but he also saves an inner psychic child within himself and thus this allows him to be a true Samurai rather than an imposter Samurai. He is a fighting force, full of emotion and power. He taps into the natural, biological forces of injustice in the final battle scenes. Ironically, this is what brings about his end, for those who fight with pure emotion exceed their bounds. When the rifleman bandit kills Kyuzo from behind a wooden screen, Kikuchoiyo is overtaken with rage and attacks the screen trying to pull it apart to reach the bandit. He takes a bullet in the belly but goes on fighting until he collapses.This brings us to the final penacle of heroism, Kambei, the mastermind Samurai leader with a vast range of intellectual, interpersonal, and warrior skills. Kambei has a range of leadership skills including; ability to make realistic assessments so as not to support unrealistic optimism, ability to use small resources to bring down much larger forces, ability to fight on the edges, the fringes, to deplete the resources and power of his enemy, ability to mentor other men by drawing out their unique talent and using that talent for the greater good, ability to judge the greater good from immediate gains, ability to change course in the middle of battle when the facts reveal that a new strategy is needed, abiltiy to recover quickly from loss and mve forward, and an ability to use humor and a personal relationship to move men toward action. Finally, he has incredible humility which allows him to make realistic assessments of conditions and resources and dynamics. Humility is an underestimated asset. Humility is essential to the leader because egotism and grandiosity cloud a man's vision. Humility keeps vision clear - an essential for survival and leadership.Now we come to the second theme of the film, which is understanding the actions of all the characters witin a context of classism and a stratified society. The meek, clownlike, foolish farmers gradually are seen as far from timid fools. They survive amidst overwhelming odds. They hire ronin, which were the masterless unemployeed samurai soldiers that roamed Japan in the 16th century. In the end, four of the seven samurai are burried with distinction in the village cemetary, but as Kambei points out, it is the farmers that won the battle, they overcame a threat to their existence, the samurai being a tool by which they overcame the threat. When the village women kill a single bandit in a chicken house using garden hoes, we see evidence of the willingness of these farmers to fight for survival. However, the farmers, like the samurai, owe much to the realistic strategic leadership of Kambei.Within this epic masterpiece are two subplots of great interest. First, young farmer Rikichi always seems to be hiding something and as the story progresses we learn that his young wife was stolen by the bandits and is now their sex slave. Rikichi volunteers to attack their camp and we learn it is to find his wife. However, as he peeps into the bandit lair, he sees her despondent and in deep grief. When she sees flames at both ends of the shack, her first instict is to scream, but her second is to remain silent in hopes that she and the bandits will all burn to death. She eventually runs from the shack but when she sees Rikichi, her overwhelming shame forces her to run back into the burning building where she is lost. The second subplot was the seduction of the young warrior Katshushiro by Shino, the daughter of Farmer Manzo. I have never seen such masterful body language as is demonstrated by Shino as she seduces the young man while maintaining the pretend role of the persued.This is a fantastic work of art that almost defies description due to its depth and mastery of storytelling. It is a film where many forces of art converge to produce a rare masterpiece.