La fortezza nascosta

George Lucas declared that this film was an inspiration for Star Wars. The similarities are very obvious.

There is a hero, actually a General undercover, and two bumbling fools that stumble upon the Hidden Fortress in the title. You can consider these two fools to be the robots in Star Wars. They certainly provide a lot of laughs. They are constantly being fooled as they help the general.

The fools, played brilliantly by Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara do manage to survive at the end and walk off together as friends. They are the most interesting part of Akira Kurosawa's film that relies more on characters than most of his other Samurai pictures.

Of course, there is the pleasure of seeing Toshiro Mifune as General Rokurota Makabe, whose mission it is to save the Princess, no, not Leia, but Princess Yuki (Misa Uehara), who has the same spirit that Lucas used in Princess Leia.

The rebel forces are, of course, fooled and the Princess and the gold they are carrying gets to a friendly province.

Another fantastic adventure by Kurosawa and Mifune.