Toshiro Mifune plays a samurai-for-hire who becomes involved in a dispute between two warring factions in a small village.

Overview: Director Akira Kurosawa's influential 1961 effort, an action-packed, sometimes humorous reconception of the individualistic loner from the American Western, stars Mifune, the director's leading man of choice, as a samurai-for-hire who becomes involved in a dispute between two warring factions in a small village.