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A haunting, evocative film set in the barren wilderness of Northern Shaanxi province in 1939. The life of a fourteen year-old peasant girl is changed forever by the arrival of a communist soldier.

Kurosawa's blackly humorous film, executed in the style of the American Western, is a sophisticated satire on greed, violence, paranoia, and human weakness. In a nonchalant manner reminiscent of a Bogart hero, a wandering samurai-for-hire (Mifune) turns the war between two clans fighting for ...