almost perfect

A touching story coupled with highly realistic and detailed battle scenes. If you want excitement, this movie should have
no problems whatsoever to elevate your blood pressure with all
its furious swords fights, ninja assisnation, bows vs rifles
and the spectacular showdown between two armies with thousands
of real actors(no CG used) filling the entire screen. It is
simply superb in term of visual satisfactions.

As for the story itself, it is reasonably well constructed but
not without flaws. From the beginning of the film, you are led to believe that Ken Watanable is a master of war. In the final showdown, the bad guys with 4 regiments(one battalion has 210
men, according to the character played by Tom Cruise and one
regiment comprising 2 battalions)armed with rifles,machine guns
and cannons come to attack the samurai village, which is deep
in the mountain. Outnumbered and armed with swords, bow and arrow
, this supposedly wise samurai general with 500 fealess samurai,
already occupying higher ground ,decides to come down the mountain and takes on the enemy in an open field. And may I mention that the advice given to Watanable by the American captain is to "take away the advantage of gun".

I know most of the movies are supposed to be watched without using your brain but I kinda hope this one is different.
11 out of 10 for visuals, 8 out 10 for acting, 5 out 10 for the
screenplay.

The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai was certainly a surprisingly refreshing escape from the many senseless movies that've recently been released into theatres. The movie was beautifully shot, paying close attention to detail, plus even the acting wasn't as dreadful as I'd expected it to be. To add to everything, the writers even had the sense to put in little sequences of comic relief, whether you found it remotely funny or not...

I thought the casting was fantastically done. It was interesting to see Tom Cruise playing such a role. Though not the best actor in the movie, he certainly did good enough of a job in developing his character throughout the course of the film. Ken Watanabe was excellent as Katsumoto. Also, I found it rather....different...when I found out that the lead actress, Koyuki, was 28 years old! Given the fact that so many "young" actresses are casted in movies these days (unless they are the starring role), I just found that fact interesting...

Another good thing about this movie is that the Japanese characters actually speak Japanese to one another (there are subtitles, of course). There are numerous American films out there where peoples of different ethnicities end up speaking English to one another in the films, as opposed to their ethnic languages. This film, however, failed to follow that trend, which in my eyes made the entire atmosphere of the film much more authentic. Instead of the Japanese peoples speaking English to one another, the foreigner is forced to learn and adapt to the language of the Japanese instead.

Of course, this movie wasn't always perfectly unscathed. Given that it's an American film, you just had to expect its few "Hollywood" moments. It's odd how Tom Cruise is able to defend himself from a gruop of samurais in the opening battle, and later degrades himself to a nobody when he fights against Katsumoto for the first time. Then there are the moments when everyone dies in a scene expect, you guessed it, good ol' Tom Cruise. Oh well, what's a Hollywood movie without these moments?

Overall, I'd highly recomment this movie. Unless you absolutely cannot stand the mere sight or thought of Tom Cruise, I'm quite confident that most audiences will enjoy this movie

Don't expect too much

What's the reason for watching The Last Samurai? The sword-fighting scenes. There are a lot of sword-fighting scenes, they're well-done, and if you enjoy watching them you'll find entertainment value in the movie. Also, the Japanese countryside is filmed beautifully here, so if you have an appreciation for nature, it's another incentive to watch.

Otherwise, The Last Samurai is nothing special. The storyline is simplistic; the samurai are all two-dimensional and unquestionably the fine and good people in the film. They can do no evil, truly. For Cruise it's one of those self-righteous roles where he gets to look angsty for the camera. There's one scene at the end for example, where he's kneeling and holding up a sword, and he's trying to look like someone who is under great emotional strain and there are these ludicrous close-ups of his sweaty face - really gratuitous. The movie defintely would have benefited from some editing and character development.