The Last Samurai

Great fucking movie. IMO the best non LOTR epic of the year. Crusie and Wantanabe were great in their respective roles, and had great scenes together. Yeah Cruise being the only survivor was a stretch, but the battles in this were the best since Braveheart IMO. Easily better than the technically great but utlimately emotionally uninvolving Master and Commander IMO. Again I think this may be the best movie of its kind since Braveheart.

Man... do I agree with you Chappers!! If Return of the King wasn't released last year... The Last Samurai would've been my pick as the best of 2004.

Call me biased if you want... I was an extra in the WWI battle scenes in Legends Of The Fall... another Zwick Flick (oooh i'm witty). The filming was done just outside Calgary in the summer of '93. (...ate tons of peanuts during breaks... and a whole lotta KFC!!!)

To see another 'war' style production staged by Mr. Z... 10 years later... was extremely cool after being a part of the process and seeing all that goes into it. Glory... Legends... Samurai... all have the same feel in those sequences.

The authenticity of EVERYTHING... combined with the acting that makes you care... (Cruise... Watanabe... the little samurai kids...) add up to make it a real doozy. Can't WAIT til the DVD hits stores in a week...

Re: The Last Samurai

You're on the right track.

This movie was terrible.

A nice hollywood homage to the samurai. I was surprised how much I liked it honestly. I think Zwick did a nice job along with Cruise and the amazing cinematography of John Toll (Braveheart). If you want to chew on something more realistic than this I recommend reading Clavell's Shogun and watching the Kurosawa classics (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Ran). Its a good movie but not as realistic or solid as say Master and Commander. Still this film is beautiful to look at and Koyuki was mmm. Cruise did a nice job of not being your typical cocky/smiley Tom Cruise type character. So despite some flaws the pros out weigh the film. Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto is wonderful and its an oscar worthy performance. Oh and has anyone mentioned there are Ninja's in it? How many times have you seen them in an A-list hollywood production?

There are some serious flaws in this flick. Superman Cruise for starters. This film just won me over in the end with its terrific performances, awesome cinematography and appreciation for the japanese samurai. Could it or should it have been more realistic or more Kurosawa like? Yeah but hollywood is hollywood.

Enjoyed it far more than Return of the King. Best action scenes of the year, and I got more emotionally pumped during this movie than during any point of ROTK. It surged. ROTK just went through the motions.

This movie has more cliches and blandness than legally blonde 2. anyone want to fill in more reasons why this film is crap?

Sure!

Zwick chose to play a heroic score during the films final charge, where they headed directly into canon fire and instead of circling them and out manuevering the cumbersome canons they were forced to bow to a ridiculous screenplay that required them to become fools. It was rather offensive for the music to trump them as heroes, when in fact they were village idiots. I have little time for Zwick's style of journalistic filmmaking.

FOTR is one of my fave movies, before you paint me as a LOTR hater. But I just felt numbed over by ROTK, nothing felt emotional. And it was certainly just as cliched as Samurai. But I sure as hell felt a lot more juiced during Samurai's cliches than during ROTK's. Both were straitforward, both were cliched, but Samurai hit all the right emotional notes for me.



And, not to mention, fucking ninjas.

The ninja/samurai battle and Watanabe's performance were enough for me to rate this movie among the year's best. If Cruise's character had been completely omitted from the film, it would have achieved a state of near perfection.

Anyway, the ninja combat alone is enough to ensure a purchase from me.

Oh, and I agree wholeheartedly with whoever rated this higher than ROTK. I'd buy Cruise as a samurai before I'd buy Viggo as a king after that absolute SHIT performance he gave in ROTK. Not to mention the fact that The Last Samurai had only one ending and it didn't involve any homo-erotic scenes between weeping short people.

It did have a weeping short person, but you're right, it wasn't homoerotic.

And those bitching about Cruise pulling a Superman, but not bitching about Merry and fucking Pippen doing the same baffle me. At least we got to see him shot up.

Well, to each his own...

But if LOTR was missing something, it most certainly was ninjas.

For the record, I loved The Last Samurai. The Big T.C. does a good job and Ken Watanabe has found a new fan in me.

I also enjoyed it, even if it dragged on tired themes. And personally - give me a damn break on the whole "He get's shot up and doesn't die" complaint.

Could've used a somewhat better ending though.

Got to agree with Mayhem on hitting all the right emotional notes. Loved the scene with the chaingun.

I don't think so many would be calling for death if it weren't Cruise.

I don't think the movie was implying that he was the last samurai, the titular character was clearly Wattanabe's role. Cruise was simply the only guy to survive that particular battle to tell about it. Just because he returned back to the village to live that life doesn't make him the last samurai. The ways of the samurai as they were died with Wattanabe's character.

That's what I thought it meant.

I" don't think so many would be calling for death if it weren't Cruise."

I hate the Cruise bashing on these boards. His performances (and ususally his movies) are often far better than many chewers give him credit for.

I like this movie. Not a classic by any stretch, but some great "fun" is to be had in this. Shit looks like it hurts in this movie, and that's always a plus in an action flick.

I remember seeing this with my cousins. We were the only ones in the theatre, so we got to have fun rooting for the samurai during the big battles. Oh, and how can you not love when Cruise skewers the asshole army dude? That's a badass moment!

This is one of the moments that never registered with me. Goldwyn was a weak choice for the character. I still kind of admired the way they portrayed this character as business as usual and not some guy who was a complete racist yelling " Japs!! " all the time. It needed a nice scenery chewing villain that could bring something else to the table. Nonetheless as I said above I like the flick.

last samurai is only as good as your expectations... if you forgive the cliches and the cheese you can enjoy it, because there is good mixed with the bad.

the movie definitely needed more desperate cries for SAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!, however.

also... a few random cuts throughout to Billy Connelly at the sight of the first battle... still impaled and raging in the face of death.

in fact, that's how the movie should have ended.

What he said.

BTW-does anyone know how it was recieved in Japan? I never found anything about that.

It broke 100 million in Japan and became one of the top movies released there (behind that movie about Leonardo DiCaprio and a big boat).

Yeesh. This film has nothing to do with WWII. One might as well say the Boston Tea party was responsible for the brutal legacy of Vietnam. I would note that the US was also invaded by the Mexican army in 1846.

Anyway, during this time period the Meiji government was busy stamping out the samurai. "Brutal overlords"? They were certainly brutal to some, but overall the Tokugawa period 1603-1867 was very peaceful.

Enough history. The film is fiction, and it's great. I could have gone for another 10 minutes of the final battle, but oh well. The love angle made me a bit uneasy, but I suppose it COULD happen, although unlikely. I don't know if I feel Cruise should have died at the end or not I suppose for the ending to work he had to be alive.

I'm glad. The Japanese cast seems to really love the film on the DVD extras. That is generally promo material, but they seem earnest to me.

And I liked this more than Dances with Wolves (might have something to do with the Ninjas).

Just watched this for the first time.

Simply beautiful, destined to be a classic. Wow. What a perfect ending.

random question... in the final battle did Cruise yell "BOB!!!!" when the guy who was following him around in the village got shot?

because, if he did... classic.


SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEE!

I can't even finish watching this film.

The first hour is so bad, I don't know if I should even bother.

It only gets worse, Tony.

Definatley one of last years worst films.

cliche? predicitable? uh, durrrr, it's a historical piece from the 1800's, it's like saying Last of the Mohicans was sooooo predictable, and what, are they going to talk about what they call kimono's in France? or about dead Nip storage? fuck no, it's the 1800's... the cinematography is amazing, Watanabe and Cruise are solid together with on screen chemistry that rivals Woo's twin Beretta's, the fighting alone is insane, no typical Hollywood schlock duels here, maybe it needed more lasers, that woulda been real cool, definitely a keeper that will only get better with age, and i always took the title to mean the last samurai (pl), not Cruise...

Watched this last night. Decidedly average. The only bits that interested me were Watanabe and his crew. Everything else... I really didn't care about.

The whole rise of imperialist japan was a result of what admiral Perry did to the japanes on behalf of the US. The fact that Japan was basically held hostage by america and forced to open its borders, was almost absent in the film. because of this, the forces of modernization in Japan paly as stock, capitalist villains in the piece, which is very irresponsible. If Japan had not modernized, they would have forever been under the thumb of the west..a soverign nation in name only.

LAST SAMURAI turned the clash between modernity and tradition into a simplistic good guys vs. bad guys fight. In fact, modernizing was a matter of SURVIVAL, not simply a grab for wealth and power by moustache-twirling bureaucrats.

All the stuff Cosmo cites above, all had it's genesis in what the US did to the japanese, who were quite content to continue their isolationist ways until we forced them to arm themeselves at gun point.

LAST SAMURAI's simplistic view of the modernization of Japan is what keeps it form greatness for me.

Well, yes and no. The movie does simplify things significantly, but it doesn't completely ignore the points you are raising. We can see in the final scene that the Emperor is being pressured by the US ambassador to sign a (probably one-sided) trade treaty. In the 11th hour the Emperor resolves that Japan will stop appeasing the West and strike out on her own. Of course modernization is necesary for that purpose.

I don't think the film paints things quite as simplisticly as you say. In one of the deleted scenes Algren (Cruise) tells Katsumoto (Watanabe) that nothing can be done to halt the march of modernization. He says the samurai will fail just as the indians did. He does not seek to vanquish bad guys (well, except for that US army officer he hates). He knows their enemy is simply progress, and that they will be crushed. Still, he is so inspired by the spirit and ideals of his samurai companions that he desires to fight alongside them.

It's true that in reality it was the samurai who were holding Japan back at this point in history. However, since the film is completely fictional and only loosely based on real events, this can't really be held against it.

Average. Incredibly average.

Hmmm.. I don't think that's quite right. It was not that Japan was practicing unfair trade, but that it was basically practicing no foreign trade. This was mainly for political, not economic reasons. The U.S. wanted a new market, and so quickly put an end to this isolationism.

I'm sure that the Japanese military would have modernized over time if left to their own devices, but it would have taken many decades longer. Before the Meiji government was established in the 1860s Japan didn't really have a national army, and those in power were deadset against adopting ideas from the West.

I liked this fairly well. I definitely didn't catch the over-simplification of modernization; I instead saw the movie as more of a tragedy. It was obvious from the beginning that modernization was inevitable and necessary, but with it came the destruction of the more noble traditional culture. I found the ending profoundly sad and downbeat, because it conveyed something that was happening across the world at the time and is still happening today: the violent destruction of native cultures at the hands of Western capitalism. Necessary, perhaps, but undoubtedly tragic.

Except...

The Cruise cop-out. He should have been a supporting character, and he should have died.

Part of me agrees that Cruise should have died in the battle, but then how would the final scene have played out? Someone had to confront the emperor, and the film would have lost a lot of steam if it had to run the final 10 minutes with none of its main stars on screen.

No one should confront the emperor. Traditional Japan should have died on that battlefield -- after all, that's what was really happening. There wasn't any of that "some of the old, some of the new" bull. The movie should have ended with Watanabe and the newly converted Cruise biting it.

you guys keep saying the movie should have been about wantanabe, but despite his strong screen presence the character was pretty empty... and if the filmmakers were forced to flesh it out what makes you think they would have done a better job than on cruise's character?

But at this point in history Japan was still generally subserviant to the West. Watanabe's actions gave the Emperor the courage to start asserting himself, and reminded him not to forget traditional Japan in the face of rampant modernization. These changes actually did occur, if not in the same way they do in the film.

Just got the dvd and on my first viewing its still a beautiful flick to watch. Still hits all the right notes for me too. Love the Zimmer score as well.

I was surprised by how much I dug this, but I thought everyone hated the ending. Isn't that a requirement, in order to be human?

The score along with the beautiful cinematography and the Ninja Fight, is really what makes this film for me.

I consider the ending to be Katsumoto's action at the end, and everything after that is just epilogue.

Well said. A lot of people have complained about Zimmer's score. I don't get it I think its wonderful. Checked out a little of disc 2 yesterday as well. Great dvd so far.

A lot of people complain about all of Zimmer's scores, that they're too Zimmer-y, which, if you ask me, is ridiculous. He is Hans Zimmer after all.

It had shades of Gladiator in it, but at the same time the use of Japanese woodwinds and the koto gave it a much different feel. It was very well done.

Anyone notice the scene lifted straight out of "Glory?" I'm talking about where Cruise is overseeing the japanese soldiers during target practice. Oh yeah and the score blows.

Agreed. It was a real classy score. One of the best elements (along with the cinematography) in the film.