The Hidden Fortress 4K Review (2025)
There are some directors who are held in such high esteem that you expect every one of their films to be a masterpiece. Akira Kurosawa is one of them. So when you watch one of his and it’s just “really good”, it’s hard not to come away feeling a little disappointed, which is obviously completely unfair. Jurassic Park might not even be in Spielberg’s top five, but if practically anyone else had directed it, it would’ve been the best film of their career. The Hidden Fortress is quite like that. It’s a great, gorgeous, fantastically entertaining movie that, sadly, isn’t quite as good as something like Seven Samurai.
It’s the story of two greedy, luckless peasants (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) who enlist in a war between two feuding feudal clans, and end up escorting a disguised general and a princess across enemy lines and back to their own territory. The peasants have no idea who they’re escorting, but they don’t care, because the general has promised to pay them in gold for their efforts.
The movie famously inspired George Lucas in the creation of Star Wars, and it’s easy to see how the characters map onto each other. The peasants, ordinary people caught up in events far too big for them, are C-3PO and R2-D2; General Rokurota (frequent Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune) becomes Obi-Wan; and Yuki is Leia. It makes for a fascinating watch for Star Wars fans, but this isn’t a Yojimbo / A Fistful of Dollars situation where the latter film is an outright remake, and people do tend to overstate the similarities between the two. It’s a shame that Star Wars overshadows The Hidden Fortress to such a great degree, because while its influence is undeniable, it deserves to be watched on its own merits.
And it has plenty of them! Typical for Kurosawa, this is a beautiful movie full of lovely widescreen compositions, that really makes the most of the locations they shot on. It is a long film, but it’s briskly paced and features more than enough action and adventure to keep your attention. Perhaps most importantly, it’s really funny: telling the story from the peasants’ point of view grounds the action in ordinary people, and gives them the chance to offer their own sarcastic commentary on events.
It’s a meticulously crafted adventure flick, charismatically acted and effortlessly directed. Is it greedy to ask for more than that? Undoubtedly yes. But after Rashomon‘s philosophical discussion of the nature of truth and Seven Samurai‘s epic sweep and grandeur, this does feel like a slightly lesser effort by comparison. To be fair, though, Kurosawa clearly isn’t attempting anything as narratively or thematically ambitious as in his best-regarded films. What he mainly seems to be doing is having fun.
It’s basically his version of a blockbuster popcorn flick, so obviously, it’s one of the best blockbuster popcorn flicks ever, but you do still hope for slightly more substance. But this is the thing about it: between the comparisons to Star Wars and the rest of its director’s body of work, it rarely gets the chance to just be what it is. And what The Hidden Fortress is, is a fabulously entertaining, classical adventure movie that’s almost up there with the very best of them. It’s brilliant – it’s just not quite a masterpiece.
★★★★
Released on 4K on 18th August / Toshiro Mifune, Misa Uehara, Minoru Chiaki / Dir: Akira Kurosawa / BFI Releasing / PG
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