Three Outlaw Samurai

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Three Outlaw Samurai
Directed by	Hideo Gosha
Written by	Keiichi Abe Eizaburo Shiba Hideo Gosha
Produced by	Ginichi Kishimoto Tetsuro Tamba
Starring	Tetsuro Tamba Isamu Nagato Mikijirō Hira Yoshiko Kayama
Cinematography	Tadashi Sakai
Edited by	Kazuo Ota
Music by	Toshiaki Tsushima
Production company	Shochiku
Release date	May 13, 1964 (May 13, 1964) [1]
Running time	93 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Three Outlaw Samurai (三匹の侍, Sanbiki no Samurai) is a 1964 Japanese chambara film by director Hideo Gosha.^[2][3]

The film is an origin-story offshoot of the original Japanese television series of the same name.^[4] The film involves a wandering ronin (Tetsuro Tamba) who finds himself involved with two other samurai (Isamu Nagato and Mikijiro Hira) who are hired to execute a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of a corrupt magistrate.^[2]

Cast[]

• Tetsuro Tamba as Sakon Shiba
• Isamu Nagato as Kyojuro Sakura
• Mikijirō Hira as Einosuke Kikyo
• Yoshiko Kayama as Oyasu
• Kyoko Aoi as Omitsu
• Hisashi Igawa as the Magistrate
• Kamatari Fujiwara as Jinbê

Synopsis[]

Peasants decide to revolt against the local lord by kidnapping his daughter, they want their fed up to finally be heard in the eyes of this man who takes pleasure in his rich situation without asking questions. Famine is not his problem. However, a passing rōnin bursts into the rebels, Sakon Shiba is simply carried by his curiosity. He can only join these men despised but weak in the face of the strength of a Lord. The rōnin quickly manages to bring back another rōnin, from such a poor condition that he prefers to sleep in prison. The trio are complemented by the Lord's bodyguard, who understands that his status as a saber-man prevents him from basking in a stable and calm life. And during the three men join forces to affirm the word of the peasants, the latter remain passive and afraid, they are locked in the fear of dying.

Release[]

The film was released in Japan in 1964. On February 14, 2012, the Criterion Collection released a DVD and Blu-ray of the film.^[2]

Reception[]

Bilge Ebiri, commissioned by Criterion Collection to write an essay on the film, wrote:^[5]

"Three Outlaw Samurai is a supremely confident big-screen debut, whose surface simplicity masks a scathing vision of society lurking beneath. In some ways, it recalls Kurosawa's samurai narratives, with its tale of renegade rōnin who come to the aid of the dispossessed. But Gosha's personal obsessions are all over the film, particularly in his depiction of the loss of honor through blind loyalty (and its liberating opposite, the regaining of honor by betrayal), and in the sharp contrast he makes between the refined, comforting worlds of power and social duty and the wild, almost animalistic existence of those who choose freedom. And unlike Kurosawa, whose characters tend to be classically drawn and endlessly layered, Gosha often works in broad strokes: his characters are archetypes, which he then deconstructs and plays off one another. A samurai can go from fighting alongside a group to fighting against them in one brief shot, as in Three Outlaw Samurai. These characters may be simple, but Gosha’s real interest is in the portrait of society he is creating—and that is anything but."

Glenn Erickson, in an article for Turner Classic Movies published after the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release, wrote:^[6]

"[I]t's an impressively well-told story with interesting characters and a surprise in every scene. Gosha and his writers Keiichi Abe and Eizaburo Shiba work clever games with the standard samurai archetypes: all are present, yet they refuse to accept their traditional roles. Gosha's thriller soon lets us know that it is not going to be yet another simplistic morality play about honor and loyalty....[Gosha] makes Three Outlaw Samurai a thorough critique of authoritarian society and the traditional honor code of the samurai. In Gosha's view the oppressive forces are money, power and class. The magistrate subscribes to no code except his own convenience and prestige. The only honor to be found in is therefore the opposition of unjust authority."

Rian Johnson has said that Three Outlaw Samurai influenced the writing of his Star Wars film The Last Jedi.^[7]

References[]

External links[]

• Three Outlaw Samurai at AllMovie
• Three Outlaw Samurai at IMDb
• Three Outlaw Samurai: The Disloyal Bunch an essay by Bilge Ebiri at the Criterion Collection