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An entertaining and influential adventure!
Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese adventure comedy The Hidden Fortress (1958) is an imaginative journey of transporting gold and a princess. It’s not a flawless masterpiece of filmmaking like some of Kurosawa’s other epics. I much prefer Rashomon, Ikiru, and Seven Samurai, but The Hidden Fortress is sure to delight fans of Kurosawa all the same for its good humor and neat adventure aspects alone. Kurosawa’s writing is centered around laughter and fun instead of high moral concepts, but he does cover The Hidden Fortress’ main theme of loyalty well.
Kurosawa’s story appears to have been highly influential of George Lucas for Star Wars’ concepts for A New Hope as well as Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from what I watched. You can see the side wipes made popular in A New Hope here in The Hidden Fortress first. The duel between old samurai comrades is not unlike Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader’s chance encounter. The similarities go on and on really. The search for gold and the fool’s greed leading to betrayal feels like Tuco endlessly betraying The Man with No Name in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The two fools come across as lecherous versions of C-3PO and R2-D2 questing for gold with Star Wars from their perspective. In short, The Hidden Fortress is a fun adventure on its own merits, but its ideas are timeless archetypes for future film plotlines.
Kurosawa’s direction is entertaining with farcical bits splitting up the epic adventure with some silly comedy. Not all the jokes land and hit hard, but you’ll likely enjoy The Hidden Forest. It does get rather long and slow in the middle, but there is plenty of payoff with exciting chases and humorous diversions. Masaru Sato’s score is uplifting and exciting with boisterous music!
Toshiro Mifune is the main draw as the cool samurai general in hiding Rokurota Makabe trying his best to outsmart two idiots and save his princess’ life. Misa Uehara is fiery and intense in a playful role as Princess Yuki. I must mention Minoru Chiaki as Tahei and Kamatari Fujiwara as Matashichi. They are hilarious and a constant source of laughter in The Hidden Fortress. You feel bad as these two unlikely heroes desperately try to survive warfare, conquer their foes, and claim hidden gold as their own. They are made more ridiculous next to the ultra serious Mifune for extra laughs.
The Hidden Fortress is not a flawless adventure, but it is a genuinely funny one.
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