In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
Essentially a superficial film and that Kurosawa, for all his talent, is as prone to pot-boiling as anyone else.
– Bosley Crowther,
New York Times,
9 May 2005
fresh:
By introducing comedy into the mixture and telling the tale from an atypical perspective, Kurosawa has differentiated The Hidden Fortress from nearly every similar feudal era Japanese epic ever committed to the screen. This is a masterpiece.