I really enjoyed the movie and although it had definite flaws and more than its fair share of cliches, I left the theatre really pleased. It’s only been a few hours since I’ve seen it but I want to see it again already and I already consider it one of my favorite movies.
I’m biased though… I have a huge soft spot for historical period pieces. Love them.
Ken Watanabe was wonderful as Katsumoto. He made me want to be Samurai… well, at least learn more about them.
And Tom was decent. Nothing terribly special.
My biggest nit-pick is all the “bad” guys never seemed quite evil enough, especially the Custer wanna-be. I wanted to hate their guts, but I just wasn’t feelin’ it.
I had a slightly self-contradictory reaction to The Last Samurai. First of all, I absolutely adore Dances With Wolves, which many people find trite, overlong, etc. And all the problems I had with The Last Samurai are things that people often complain about in Dances With Wolves, where I’m not bothered by them. Go fig.
My biggest gripe that has not been previously brought up is that at the very end, when the wise young emperor has learned a lesson from the noble deaths of all the samurai, blah blah blah, well, he’s the father or grandfather of the emperor who’s going to stand idly by while Japan commits some of the most horrible war-related atrocities in the extremely bloody annals of human history. So I’m not really sure that Japan’s warrior code, the same code that sent young men off to suicidally crash airplanes into boats, is something I’m comfortable celebrating.
It would be kind of like celebrating the martial code of 1890’s Germany…
That said, the film had some fine performances and some gripping scenes. Definitely worth seeing.
You mean I should stop pointing out that most of the actual rebel samurai were armed with Enfield rifles and the rebels had no real calvary, other than a few officers ( unlike the central government, which had three regiments of calvary )?
Oh, okay :).
I liked it. I might have loved it if it werent for the terrible terrible ending it had. There it was, all set up for a great ending, with the samurai all being cut down by machine gun fire, symbolising the end of an era, and appealing to my sense of doomed romanticism. But oh no, they had to blow it and have Tom Cruise be the sole survivor and whats more ride off into the sunset with the babe. Bah, a happy ending was so inappropriate here.
I have a little more respect for Cruise in this film after watching “Actor’s Studio” the other night. He spent eight months, three sessions a day, learning how to fight with a katana.
You might be interested to hear that the general consensus here in Japan seems to be that The Last Samurai is the first good Western movie about Japan, or at least the first good Western-made samurai film. I haven’t heard a word against it here.
I didn’t really want to see The Last Samurai when my wife and I saw it… I had been hearing a lot of good things about Big Fish and really wanted to see that instead. However, my wife talked me into this one (because she had had a shit day and needed some release which Tim Burton probably couldn’t provide), so off to The Last Samurai we went.
Overall, I mostly liked it. Tom Cruise was good in it, though it wasn’t his best role (that would have to be Born on the Fourth of July). As others have said, at some point in The Last Samurai you really forget its Cruise playing the role and just enjoy the performance. Ken Watanabe really stole the show, he was the best thing about the film. The fighting was good, and I liked the fact the romance angle was there, but underplayed. I like a good romantic film, but it would have been inappropriate to feature it here… good choice not to do so. The themes of the film were honest and thought-provoking, moreso than in Dances With Wolves.
It was an entertaining film. I still might have preferred to see Big Fish (still haven’t seen it yet), but I don’t regret seeing The Last Samurai at all.
Lamia, just out of curiosity, what’s the feeling in Japan about Black Rain (one of my own favorite films about Japan)?
Kill Bill came out first, din’it? 
Do you mean the Japanese movie about the aftermath of the atom bomb, or the Hollywood movie about the yakuza? I think the former is fairly well respected, but I’ve never heard anyone mention the latter here. Yakuza films are a staple of the domestic film industry, and I don’t know if many filmgoers were interested in seeing a foreign film dealing with the subject. But it could be that a lot of people have seen it but don’t talk about it a lot now because it’s 15 years old; I’m not sure.
Uh, yes, it came out first, but that’s of little relevance since Kill Bill seems to be universally loathed by the Japanese. I haven’t seen the movie myself so I can’t say whether this reaction is justified, but I’ve seen otherwise mild-mannered office ladies and engineers work themselves into a heat describing their deep hatred of Kill Bill.
hehe … totally true. I know Japanese history somewhat and I was well aware that the “evil” modernists had it right all along. They were pretty corrupt in the way they were “modernising”… but history vindicates them. If Japan hadn’t modernized heavily and fast like they did they would have been split up and devoured just like China was. Katsumoto was clearly the spoilsport. 
I don't know enough to remember if the emperor was really such a puppet...
Still if you went to “Last Samurai” expecting a TRUE movie… so sorry for you. Its a blockbuster with a lot of eye candy, action scenes and even more cliches. Fun ? Yes ! A lot of Fun ! Yep ! Turn off the higher brain and sit back… enjoy.
If you want a good samurai movie I recommend: The B&W "Seven Samurais" and the more modern "After the Rain / Ame Agaru".I liked the movie overall but didn’t care for the ending very much. Obviously the samurai had to die tragically, but the setup wasn’t so great. So let’s see, the samurai repel most of the government army sent against them, but rather than try to entrench and get more rebels together for the next wave, they charge into the cannon and Gatlings? Say what? I mean, there’s fighting against hopeless odds for something you believe in, and then there’s being a moron. If this were my movie, I would have had the government army penetrate through to the villiage and the samurai make their last stand there, where they nobly sacrifice themselves to protect their families. Oh, and Tom Cruise would not have lived after his armor was made into a colander, except maybe long enough to help Watanabe kill himself.
I generally liked it. I got the impression that Katsumoto’s main reason for rebelling was that Japan was throwing away its traditional culture too fast. He understood the need for modernization, but he was angered by how the businessmen were abandoning any semblance of traditional Japan in the process.
This is what the official histories say about Saigo Takamori, leader of the real Satsuma Rebellion. Although this is possible (after all, Saigo was one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration in the first place), I think it’s possible that Saigo was also annoyed that the rank, power, and property he and the other samurai had before the restoration was stripped away.
I had the odd experience of seeing it in a theater in Kagoshima City, where the Satsuma Rebellion actually happened. (The castle walls still have bullet holes, and the cave where Saigo and his remaining rebels committed suicide has become a historical monument.) I actually saw it twice, and each time the theater was completely sold out. And at the end of the movie, most of the audience was in tears. I wondered if this was just a local phenomenon (Saigo is still considered a great hero here), or if audiences were so moved all over Japan. (Kagoshima prefecture is a long ways away from where the movie rebellion took place, I think.)
I thought the ending was too Hollywood (only the gaikokujin survived? and he went back to the village to live happily ever after? feh). If I had been writing it, it would have been the British guy (or possibly that Japanese lieutenant) who returned the sword. And that last shot of Cruise returning to the village would’ve been a P.O.V. shot only, so we never know for sure if he returns…
I just watched this film last night. I really enjoyed it. I did feel that Tom Cruise’s character should’ve died, though. I didn’t realize it was based on a true story, though I suspected it had some basis in reality. I agree with others in that I was kinda siding with the “enemy.” It simply wasn’t possible to keep to the old ways in the era they lived in, and though their methods and reasons were bad, they were inevitably correct. So it was frustrating to want the “good guys” to win, but know that they couldn’t or shouldn’t do so.
I saw the movie while visiting a friend in Kumamoto, where it met with a similarly teary reception. I live in western Honshu and have heard the same from everyone around here who saw the movie in the theater. When the subject of the film comes up people often ask me if I cried at the end, and when I say “no” they unfailingly attribute this to the fact that I’m a foreigner. “If you were Japanese, you would have cried.”
To those of you earlier in this resurrected thread that were concerned about the message of the film and Japanese militarism, I feel I should point out that the treaties being offered by the Western powers really were unequal and really were screwing over Japan. It wasn’t so much devotion to the Emperor that eventually got Japan into trouble as it was desire to get out of these treaties and prove Japan to be equal to the Western powers economically and militarily.
*To the film’s credit, I think we aren’t supposed to know for sure whether that last shot is real or just the “happy ending” the other guy is imagining for Cruise.
I don’t remember seeing any crying when I saw it. The theater was sold out, though. The two complaints I heard most often from my Japanese friends was that Katsumoto’s last words were spoken in English, not Japanese, and that Cruise survived.
I have a review of the movie from one of the local youth magazines. If anyone’s interested I can translate it.
After first seeing it I remember thinking that Cruise should have proved himself a true samurai by committing seppuku at the end of the movie.
I bought the DVD (btw the Japanese cover is much nicer ) and have watched it a few times because it really has some great visuals. I push the history out of my head and just skip the appalling emperor-sword scene.
Wow… I’ve never been asked that question, though I’ve spoken about the movie with a fair number of Japanese.
I think you may be giving the movie too much credit. I think that it, like a lot of works dealing with the early Meiji, wants to pretend that the first half of the 20th-Century never happened.
I saw it the day before yesterday and really liked it, - except for the ending. Just like everyone else! This is a movie that would benefit from a “Phantom Edit” version that just started the credits rolling after the battlefield fadeout.
I think it benefited from Tom Cruise though, since because his character was “Tom Cruise” all the attention was put on his surroundings, and the characters he dealt with. It made Katsumoto that much more interesting when I didn’t really give a shit about Algrens character arc.
You’re a man though, right? Since I’m a woman I’m probably assumed to be more likely to cry at movies, or at least more willing to admit to it.
*Well, I like to think the original writers at least did their homework, but I agree that most of the people involved probably didn’t know or care much about the broader historical view. The treaties were unequal in reality though, and the movie at least hinted at this. It could have done a much, much better job of making the point clear, and should have in order to give the viewers something like an actual reason to root for the samurai, but maybe they figured the movie was long enough as it was.