Three Outlaw Samurai

A wandering ronin named Sakon Shiba comes upon a group of villagers who have taken the daughter of their magistrate hostage. The peasants want to force the official to lower their taxes and have barricaded themselves inside a mill with the girl. At first Shiba stays out of their dispute, but as the standoff hardens he throws in his lot with them. Two men who have turned against the magistrate's guard, Sakura and Kikyo, join him, and the three masterless warriors end up facing the forces sent against the peasants.

This is Hideo Gosha's first film as director, released in 1964 and set among rural communities and samurai authority. He wrote it with Keiichi Abe and Eizaburo Shiba. Tetsurō Tamba, who also produced, plays the lead, with Isamu Nagato and Mikijiro Hira as his companions and Miyuki Kuwano, Yoshiko Kayama and Yōko Mihara among the credited cast of twenty-three. Gosha went on to make Samurai Wolf in 1966 and its sequel the following year, before later films such as Onimasa and Tokyo Bordello.

On IMDb the film holds 7.6 from around 4,400 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 from roughly a hundred. A small set of critics' reviews averages 7.2, closely in line with those audience scores. The film runs 93 minutes.