Akira Kurosawa may be one of cinema's more humane filmmakers. While he did see a lot of sadness and injustice in the world, and would address those issues in his films, few of his works skewed full-bore into cynicism. Often, wicked characters would face retribution for their actions -- seen most notably in Kurosawa's Shakespeare adaptations "Throne of Blood" (1957), "The Bad Sleep Well" (1960), "Kagemusha" (1980), and "Ran" (1985) -- but more often, their moral fall was depicted as a great, tragic failing of the world. He looked and saw people, not archetypes. If one sees archetypes in Kurosawa...