A long time ago and a himalaya or two away, there lived a girl called Snow White. Changing social circumstances and norms resulted in her having to leave home and live in a glass house, accompanied (atleast, in the Tadsilwenyan mythos) by seven appropriately named dwarves: Doc, Dopey, Grumpy,... oops. Wong er, that is, Wrong story.
One wonders just what particular version of the story of Snow White the great Master K was thinking about when he made his gritty, realistic masterpiece about the shaven ones. An off-beat one, one hopes.
The 'Seven Samurai' opens with a millety spy listening in on the deeply deliberative discussions of the executive council of some unnamed ship of the high seas of international finance. The leaders of this particular leviathan wish to determine the optimal moment to effect a transfer of ownership to maximise their holdsharers profit. Unfortunately for them, the spy has a conflicting material interest, which is where this story begins.
Spy runs in his hoppy gait to his headquarters of nonmilitary unintelligence, where the spiritual ancestor of General Schiesskopf promptly dispatches an early scouting patrol armed with jugs of rice and pots of sake to gather up renegades from the holy band of people who wield two swords[1]. Collecting such people naturally affords us an insight into the collected people's character, where we meet the shaven one (who is capable of wreaking havoc by creating a cannonball from two hemispheres of rice), watch him becomes the General, and lead a motley crew of sword-wielding characters in their meaningful fight to do justice.
Much fighting later, we see that Toshiro "Kikuchiyo" Mifune, the only samurai of the lot whom we cheered for, is dead from an bullet, and the last of the financiers have joined him. Our remaining heroes from the best colleges[2] are left with no utility to their present employer, and thus end up with miles to go before they, well, need to write another statement of purpose[3].
Seriously speaking, this is a good movie about the beautiful futility of war. After all, maneuvers on the high seas of international finance need a certain time before they can settle down into a steady state.
[1] Not what you think, sadly. The shorter sword has "Made in IIT" engraved on the blade, (something like Hattori Hanzo would do) while the longer one has "Forged in IIM"[4] painted over the engraving.
[2] They might have been from the Musashi school of ring and sword. That is the same thing, though.
[3] I hope this was just a historical thing. The usual kinematic cinematic disclaimer of "all characters and events [...] fictional [...]" applies here.
[4] It has since been implied to us that this is ambiguous. To be absolutely clear, we mean forged(1) from here, and not forged(2).
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