If I had a time machine, and could arrange to have Akira Kurosawa direct a live action adaptation of an Anime with all the advantages of modern technology. This is the Anime I would choose. It's a 10, I recommend it.
There are a lot of analytical things I could say about this movie, others have said a lot already. But the main thing on my mind right now is this.
It's set in medieval Japan (The late Muromachi Period, 24th through 16th centuries). Of the different Human clans depicted in the movie, the one most ancestral to the primary population of modern Japan (the ones associated with The Emperor and Samurai), are the most villainous.
The might seem strange at first. But we do the same thing in the English Speaking world, in works based on Arthurian Legend, where the Angles and Saxons are depicted as savage marauding pagan barbarians. Or even more generally when the Vikings are depicted that way.
I've seen in some Disqus comments sections people being confused by Saber in Fate/Zero talking about Britain falling to ruin, since it looks to them like Britain is still there. But the population of modern Britain mainly descends from people who were King Arthur's enemies. They took over the island and started calling Arthur's people "Welsh" which meant foreigner in the Saxon language. Then later we Anglo-Saxons traveled across the Atlantic and did the exact same thing to the Native American, massacred them, raped them, and appropriated their culture.
Similarly is how the movie actually refereed to the Samurai as "Samurai Thugs". Not the opinion we're used to Anime having of Samurai. But remember, the Samurai are often compared to European Medieval Knights, and plenty of modern Western Fiction sometimes acknowledges that they were really the Gangsters of their time. Like in The Tudors and Game of Thrones.
Perhaps this is not an appropriate observation for a Western viewer of the film to make. Though it would arguably take a Western perspective to make the comparison to the Saxons in Arthurian Legend. I wonder what Gaijin Goomba would think?
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