A quiet Japanese village is under siege by bandits. The rural residents hire a septet of warriors to defend them. Simple, right? Yet Akira Kurosawa's game-changing chanbara turns that basic concept into one of the greatest, grandest action films of all time. This sword-clashing spectacle not only gave future moviemakers a highly malleable plot (it's been used for everything from The Magnificent Seven to A Bug's Life). It also proved that Hollywood didn't have a lock on vast, visceral epics of courage under fire.