A summary of the Japanese classic from Akiro Kurosawa.

Every Year the inhabitants of small japanese farmer – village get robbed by bandits. These Year one of the farmer (Rikichi) is fed up of loosing every Year all his crops. He wants to fight against them, with the help of samurais. But this is not as easy as he thought. The farmers are poor and cant afford more than three meals per day to pay the samurais. That is actually not enough. But after a few days of searching Rikichi finds one old samurai who agrees to help the farmers. With him a young samurais who hasn't fought much excepts the deal. The old samurai knows that two are not enough to protect a whole village. It has to be seven to have a realistic chance against the bandits. Though its tough to find five more samurais. After he found four more he decides that this might be enough to help the village. The six start to make their way. On the way to the village the former farmer Kikuchiyo follows the six. He wants to be samurai, though he isnt born as one. He has a hard time to get accepted by the others. But afterall they do, so they are seven samurais. Arriving at the village the farmer are not happy to see them. They are afraid of the samurais and hide their daughters and wifes. One of them even cuts of the hair of his beautiful daughter to make her look like a man. But the Samurais are not free of prejuicisms neither. Slowly the samurais succeed in building up a better relationship between them and the farmers. There is a lot to do: the farmers have to be taught how to fight and a wall has to be build for protection. The relationship between farmers and samurais gets better and better. Over the time even a love affair is developing between one of the samurais and the daughter of a farmer. The motivations of the samurais are very different, but over the time boredom, the search for fame, and militaric obedience change into real solidarity with the farmers. The at the beginning frightened farmers change, too. Not at last because of their brave protection the bandits get defeated. The film changes dramatically after a very long and calm exposition, to a highly psicologicly raising of tension, and then a brusk starting of action, the fight between samurais and bandits.