The Seven Samurai, Akira

I'll just say it up front: I hated both these movies. The Seven Samurai is 3 1/2 hours long! I supposed it's partially my fault, for thinking it would be a thinking, fun action movie (like Yojimbo) or even more action oriented then Throne of Blood. Instead I found it extremely long a not a little tedious. The main character says at the beginning that the samurai always fight and pay the price with no thanks and it takes 3 1/2 hours to prove that to be true. Oh God, it was boring. I much prefer The Magnificent Seven, but maybe that's just me. Akira (or maybe it was Ikiru) is better, in that while not much happens, it took a much shorter time to get to the point and it's point was far more poignant. A middle-level bureaucrat discovers he is dying. He goes out on the town with a young, female colleague and then goes home to his family, who, he finds out, he cannot tell of his illness, mainly because they're cold and uncaring. And then we go to his funeral-and find that he spent the last months of his life (when no one knew he was ill) trying to get a park built in a small village. He pestered everyone to get it done, although pestered is not quite the word for his humble persistence. And this was his triumph-this lovely park in a small village, where there had previously been what looked like a dump. It's clear at his funeral that no one understood why he was trying to hard to get the park built or why it was important-but when the women of the village come to pay their respects, it's clear how much he and the park mean to them. His fellow bureaucrats vow to be more like him but in the end, it seems they are destined not to change. Did I like it? Not really-I think I appreciated it's point more than the actual movie.