I saw this last night and had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was beautifully shot and the portrayal of the samurai culture and lifestyle seemed accurate.
But before I saw the film, I read a negative review that stated the film was basically a hack job of Dances With Wolves and Braveheart. All through the film the only thing I could think about was how it should have been called Dances With Samurai. My hatred of Tom Cruise didn’t help either.
Thoughts?
The whole White Man’s Guilt shtick is played out. It would have been nice if they showed the bad w/ the good. I’ve always been given to the impression that by the time of the revolution the Samurai were a bunch of thugs, and even before that it’s not like they represented an enlightened system of governance.
I found it very annoying that the movie portrayed the Samurais’ last stand as a sort of Thermopalye (sp?). Not only would the Greeks not have been stupid enough to allow the enemy to pass through a physical bottle neck and fight them on a wide open field, it beggars belief to think that they would have rushed headlong in a suicidal charge to die honorably rather than re-establish a tactical position that put what they still had to the most effective use. The Greeks died because a traitor showed the enemy an alternative path that allowed them to be surrounded, not because they said, “Well, we’re gonna lose, so we might as well get it over with.”
Still a good movie though.
Not really. In actuallity, most Samurai had become something of a literary class. They were like Chinese bureaucrats - they knew art and literature and some of them had actual government responsibilities. Fact is, most were doing no real work, just living off of an increasingly small government paycheck because that’s what they were supposed to do. Many had already sort of droppped out of the class because they couldn’t make a living anymore. But there were places that kept older traditions alive.
Interesting. Thanks!
I, personally, enjoyed the movie greatly. I didn’t read it so much as “white-man guilt” as “the guilt of one particular white man’s feelings about what he has done”. In that particular time period, some, if not many, white men did many things to feel guilty about. I also didn’t see it as all “Japanese good/white bad”, either. Note, the scene with the ninjas. But I don’t feel the movie should be over-analyzed. It was beautiful to look at, and the story line made me feel good. I can like a movie just on those merits alone. My husband liked it too; he’s pretty taken with that particular time period in Japanese history, and was worried that it might be portrayed inaccurately. While the movie did make some mis-steps in this vein, it didn’t make a lot of them, and kept fairly true to historical fact.
I saw the movie tonight. I enjoyed it, although it did whitewash the samurai about as much as I had expected it to. It would have been interesting to get a peasant’s point of view, or get a wider idea of village life.
I didn’t get any notion of “Japanese good/white bad”; to me it was more “samurai good/modern bad”.
I felt the last scene with the Meiji Emperor was absolutely awful. It almost ruined the movie for me.
The Japanese I know who’ve watched the movie said they thought the story wasn’t particularly interesting, but they did like the battle scenes.
Most everyone I have talked to felt the movie should have dropped the last 5-10 minutes. I agree. No need for a “John Williams” moment.
There are Ninja in this movie? Sweet Merciful Christ.
No, ninjas. Sweet Merciful Christ is in a different movie.
Dances With Samurai. I like it!
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from the first previews I predicted that it would be Dances With Wolves meets Shogun. From what I’ve heard and read, I was right.
Oh, and boy did he master the katana and Japanese fast!
It’s a somewhat clichéd and predictable movie, but it’s not half bad. Beautiful to look at, fun to watch for the most part.
I enjoyed the movie (up to the last 20 minutes or so, and I have high hopes for an alternate ending that’s what we were all waiting for). I had some serious issues with the handling of the emperor’s role (not to mention that if they’re going to have him speaking Japanese, he’d BETTER be speaking some Japanese so archaic and formal that I can’t catch a word of it.) I hated hated HATED the ending. But I felt the handling of most of the movie was quite good. I think it -thought- it was a good enough movie to make a thoughtful comparison with the battle at the end and Custer’s Last Stand, which had been referenced throughout the film - was it really any different? But it turned out to not be as good a movie as it thought it was. 
I felt it was not inaccurate how fast he learned Japanese - he spoke it like a foreigner who had learned it clumsily, and he did have nothing to do all winter but learn it. We were given to understand that he had learned some Native American languages as well, and it seemed even at the end that he was catching most of what people were saying, but not everything. I thought it was pretty good on Tom Cruise’s part as a portrayal of an imperfect speaker of a foreign tongue. The katana thing… well, at least they didn’t show him becoming the Best Japanese Swordsman Ever, I guess.
And I did give the movie mad props for not taking the easy joke with “Bob”, his bodyguard.
I did enjoy this movie but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations of it after reading all the glowing reviews. I think that was mostly because of Tom Cruise.
Whenever I’m watching a Tom Cruise movie no matter how good the movie actually is, I just find him incredibly distracting. And that’s not in a good way.
The whole time I was watching The Last Samurai, I kept thinking, “Yep, there’s Tom Cruise learning martial arts” “There’s Tom Cruise riding a horse”, etc.
And another thing–his teeth are just too white. Blindingly white. He could light his own scenes with the wattage from his mouth.
I did think the movie had some beautiful shots. The Samurai village was gorgeous.
I saw this movie without reading any reviews, and I’m so glad, because I might not have seen it, and I really enjoyed it. In spite of the clunky ending with the effete Emperor, the movie avoided many cliches that would have irritated me: Algren only kissed Taka once, but the scene where she dresses him was sexier than many love scenes I’ve had the misfortune to watch; Katsumoto’s dying words were moving, not corny, IMO; and the ultimate fate of Algren is left open.
As for Algren’s speed in learning katana, don’t forget that he was experienced fighting with a sword, and carried one in the movie. I realize katana is different, but it’s not as if he had no training in swordplay. His guilt also made sense to me, as did the appeal of dying in an honorable battle, so unlike the many in which he’d participated in the past. Overall, my willing suspension of disbelief was not as strained as I feared it might be.
I may be the only person who likes Tom Cruise, but I do, so that part was fine with me.
js_africanus, what do you consider an “enlightened” system of government, and why was feudal Japan less enlightened than anyone else operating at the time? I would also be careful of calling the samurai “thugs,” as a group.
Odd, though, that when Algren leads the Japanese army they’re bumbling with muzzle-loaders, but the next Spring when he goes up against them they have bolt-action rifles firing smokeless powder, at a time when the US & British were still using single-shot trapdoor rifles that clogged the air with smoke.
I liked the movie for the most part. Good acting, beautiful cinematography, some cool action scenes. But I didn’t find the plot particularly compelling. There was no particular reason, so far as I could tell, for the audience to root for Katsumoto, except that he’s a neat guy and has Tom Cruise on his side. There was no sense that the Japanese people would be any better if his agenda had succeeded over the fat modernist guy’s agenda. Maybe if they had shown factory slums, as compared to peasants working in the field, or something. There was a line at the end about Katsumoto giving gold to the masses, which shows that Katsumoto as a person is charitable and all that, but it doesn’t show that feudal, agrarian Japan was better for the average Japanese than modern, industrial Japan.
Good point, Miller. Although it really struck me how western-style warfare seemed completely devoid of artistry when compared to the Samurai.
What really bugged me was the constant comparisons between Native Americans and the Samurai, as if they are one and the same. The ending was awful and I could have done without the love story too. But thankfully it wasn’t overly intrusive.
I liked the pretty pictures and the neat “slow-motion recap” of Algren’s actions after the fact. It really gave the feeling that here was a guy who was good at fighting, and hated it.
I guess I’m too cynical to appreciate the concept of charging at machine guns,but it was a very pretty movie. And it had ninjas, though they were far less sneaky than I expected. I thought ninjas didn’t really go for a one-on-one fight if they coudl help it, simply out of practicality.
I agree that the Algren-Taka relationship was handled very well. I had been worried about how they were going to handle it. Katsumoto’s dying words were quite well done, although I think it might have been better if he had delivered them in Japanese.
I would consider most of the North American and Western European governments at the time more ‘enlightened’ in regards to their positions on human rights and laws. And perhaps any other society where it was illegal to kill a member of a lower class on a whim.