6/10 - Weakest Kurosawa film I've seen yet

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2003)

The pacing of this film is awful. There are a large number of scenes which I felt were 2 or 3 times as long as they needed to be. The musical score was also awful and didn't seem to convey the proper mood.
I saw the shorter version. Someone commented that the longer version was better... maybe it is, but it seemed like there wasn't enough story to fill up 2 hrs 40 mins, much less 3 hours.
The only reason it gets a rating of 6 is due to Kurosawa's visuals.