The Inspiration for the Magnificent Seven
Akira Kurosawais one of my favorite directors, I have seen a fair few of his movies over the years, and I have seen this one more than once. If you haven't seen anything from Kurosawa you should, as a lot of his movies have been remade by Hollywood.
The story line goes something like this. Local bandits discuss raiding a mountain village for food and other supplies, however their boss decides to wait until after the next harvest has they have already raided this village recently.
The discussion is overheard by one of the local farmers, he tells the rest of the village what he has heard. The village elder retells a story about another village that hired samurai and did not get troubled by bandits. Hence it is decided that they should hire some Samurai to protect their village, however, they are farmers and don't have much money, so the elder tells them to hire hungry samurai.
After a short period a veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, decides to answer the request for protection. Another six samurai eventually respond to the veteran, and the village now has seven samurai to protected them. This of course would not be enough if it was only the samurai protecting the village, so the villagers are taught defend themselves.
The samurai essentially receive three small meals a day and a place to stay while they prepare for the return of the bandits. The bandits do of course return and face a village that is much better prepared and organised than it ever has been before. There are however always causalities in battle, and not all the villagers or samurai survive.
This is arguably one of Akira Kurosawa's best films, and he has made a lot of them, he was still directing into his late 70's , and quite a few of his films provided inspiration or were copied by Hollywood for western audiences/culture. So if you haven't seen this, find a copy on DVD and watch it.