It's amazing to me how how contemporary this film's pacing of action and comedy feel considering it's over 60 years old. It's well known that Lucas was directly influenced by this film for Star Wars, but I think every "on the run" action/comedy movie since owes a a huge debt to this film as well. It just goes from one jam to another, never letting up. Especially as soon as they hit the road. This is great.

This movie is very funny, every scene with the duo works perfectly and the humor aged very well.

I loved 7 Samurai, though admittedly I had to watch it in 2 sittings but it was a masterpiece. This is the second Akira Kurosawa movie from the boxset, and the one I looked forward to most. I loved Toshiro Mifune in the last one so I'm happy to see him back in this.

This film was a bit hard to access as a Westerner, but with a little patience, I was rewarded. I definitely see its influence on Lucas and Star Wars, but our feudal peasants are _very_ different from our droids, Star Wars fans: their portrayal shows all of their crassness with really nothing to redeem them. On the technical side of things, the Criterion subtitles in white were very difficult to read against the film’s backgrounds.