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(1954) dir Akira Kurosawa w/Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Siji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Kato, Isao Kimura, Keiko Tsushima [206 min] If you had to find one word to describe Kurosawa’s awe-inspiring epic, it might be ‘undeniable.’ The movie sent shockwaves across the world, inspiring generations of filmgoers with its dynamic action, density of detail, moral clarity, diamond-sharp pictorialism and intricate design. Without its example, one of the basic dramatic templates of post-war moviemaking – the disreputable team sent on an impossible mission – would never have seen the light of day, and scores of moviemakers, from Sam Peckinpah to Francis Ford Coppola, would have taken very different paths. Kurosawa’s intention was to give Japanese culture a shot of adrenalin, but he wound up delivering it to world cinema, and the effect has yet to wear off.