Guns are bad, because they cause and/or allow peasants to become uppity and seek to rise above their stations. Things are best when everyone knows their place and people don’t try to rise above their stations. Peasants are bumbling cowards, although when given guns they will become swaggering bullies. But at heart, they just want to be ruled by their betters. Shooting people with guns is dishonorable, but shooting people with arrows is honorable. Hacking people to death with swords is, of course, honorable. Setting people on fire is also honorable. Absolute monarchs are good; it’s bad when absolute monarchs lose power, and good when absolute monarchs regain power.
I dunno, I actually kind of liked it–very rousing battle scenes; a fine, charismatic performance from Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto; and Koyuki (Taka) is very beautiful–but it’s not really the sort of movie you want to think about too deeply afterwards.
MEBuckner’s warning came a little late for me, 'cause I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and I can’t really see anyway that Katsumoto is the good guy here. He’s basically a violent reactionary, who doesn’t like the modernization of Japan and decides that gives him the right to start burning down rail stations. I keep drawing uncomfortable mental connections between Katsumoto and people who bomb abortion clinics. We’re supposed to cheer for him when he sets a bunch of peasants on fire so that he can keep having tea ceremonies?
On the bright side, Katsumoto’s vision for Japan is completly crushed. The movie tries to spin the end as some sort of pyrrhic victory for Katsumoto, but I can’t see how. Japan has telegraph poles, railways, and a modern army with state-of-the-art weapons, but I thought Katsumoto was opposed to Japan having those things. The samurai are, apparently, still outlawed. Not counting all the samurai that Katsumoto got killed, of course. So, the samurai class, which Katsumoto wanted to preserve, is wiped out. Sure, the emperor finally grew a pair and took all the fat industrialist’s property and money away, which I suppose is a good thing. The message, apparently, is that what Japan really needed was an absolute ruler with no respect for property rights. Or, perhaps we are meant to understand that Katsumoto’s sacrifice so impressed the people of Japan that they adopted the warrior code themselves, so that the samurai lived on in the hearts of the people. Of course, we all know how well the combination of feudal honor codes and modern warfare worked in WWII, so again, not seeing the happy ending here, either.
I thought it was OK, though if you have seen the adverts or the trailer you already know the movie. The premise does not lead anywhere you would not expect.
There is something about the portrayal of the Samurai which is so reverential that it boarders on condescention, as if they are stoic figures lacking any real humanity. During the movie I kept thinking of how much more I enjoyed the liveliness and humor of Kurosawa’s characters in The Seven Samurai. I could be way off in that judgement, that idea just stuck in my head on the first viewing.
Just got back from seeing it, and boy is my bottom sore! That’s a long movie, esp. considering they started a half-hour past when they should have! I didn’t plan on liking it, and the squirting blood was a bit too much KillBill, but it was good. I don’t have any plans to think too much more deeply about it…it was beautiful, and entertaining, and that’s enough.
Oh, and the SO got paged at the beginning that his grandchild is on the way, so the father/son relationships were especially poignant.
Oh hell people, this is at heart a romantic fantasy movie. Its no different from LotR in its wishing for a perfect yesterday that we all know never was.
The Ninja as presented are pretty accurate.
I don’t agree. The Samurai gamble, catcall, and watch silly plays. And truth be told, they could be that amazingly stoic when the wanted to be. Samurai were more than a bit odd; the movie version is idealized, but accurate in that idealization.
In any event, I think Katsumoto’s desire had to do more with not pitching the culture wholesale into the sea so they can ape westerners. Which is, more or less, what the elites were doing in the movie. And honestly, history shows that the government they built was not exactly built on giving the people what they wanted,
And he didn’t burn the peasant village at the beginning: the railroaders did that.
I haven’t seen it yet, but the posters have given me some ray of hope for my wife’s sanity. After years of Cruise-worship, she told me she thought Hiroyuki Sanada (on the right) was better looking.
I didn’t hate it like I thought I was going to, I hardly ever wanted to claw Tom Cruise’s face off. I loved all the fight scenes, particularly the archery. The scenery was gorgeous.
My main complaint is that the Meiji restoration, and the downfall of the samurai are interesting enough subjects that stories about them don’t need superfluous American protagonists.
My first thought upon leaving the theater: “Man, I want to watch some Rurouni Kenshin!”
I tried to avoid any reviews as I always do before I see a movie cause it tends to make you have many apprehensions about what you are going to see. All-in-all I thought it was very entertaining and poignant( to a point anyway) about the quickly changing cultures of not just America but all across the globe.
I think some of you may have over analyzed the movie quite a bit.
Just take it for what it is…entertainment
Although I do agree that the ending was a little too drawn out.
Oh boy. Thought it had such potential, but then…ugh! Too many subplots to explore all in a 3 hour movie, so it didn’t do any of them justice.
We’re truly supposed to believe that a p.o.w. could rise to be second in command of his enemy, the Samurai, over the course of a year…? Man that’s a big pill to swallow! Algren: 1) is a traitor; 2) is a FOREIGNER; 3) comes from the culture which the Samurai is trying to suppress; 4) killed Katsumoto’s brother-in-law; and 5) is presumably a Christian, or at least a non-Buddhist.
Where was the political fallout from the other Samurai at Katsumoto’s blind trust of Algren? Surely the other Samurai bristled at their leader taking tactical advice from Algren?
And then the last 15 minutes…oy vey!
I mean, Algren is at BEST a war criminal and at worst a traitor to the emperor and he’s allowed to walk right up to the emperor, complete with a sword in his hand? Where is the security? It’s like bin laden knocking on the White House door and walking right up to G.W…and then having G.W. take his advice!
I half expected the emperor to say, “General Alglen, I want you to reed my people now.”
Whew! I’ve arrived in this thread a bit late, but, here are my two cents, anyhow…
I enjoyed the movie.
It didn’t have the ‘feel’ of a Japanese samurai film (something that many Japanese people have remarked on), but… it was still entertaining.
I was glad they didn’t resort to any ‘Hong Kong’ movie cliches, like ‘flying swordsmen’… you know, the wire-stunts.
There was a lot of hoopla about T.C.'s spoken Japanese… yeah, OK, his pronunciation was pretty good most of the time… except for the crucial word…
In the same sentence, he says “Katsumoto” with a Japanese “ka” (same “a” as in “wAnnAbee”), but ruins it by then saying “SAMurai” (as in “SAM I AM”)… there’s no ‘hard’ “A” sound in Japanese…
OK…
This is probably just as nitpicky as the last point, and completely unnoticable to anyone unfamiliar with the Japanese landscape (that doesn’t include Japanese people, by the way), but…
Well, hell, if Peter Jackson could manage to film in New Zealand and not include any vegetation that looked like it didn’t belong in Middle Earth, then, WTF…?
From the earliest scenes, we see samurai charging through… tree ferns! Lots of those in New Zealand… but in Japan? At the beginning of the last big battle scene, we see a distant, grassy hill… at the top, a single, solitary… big-ass tree-fern! What’s that thing doing there?
Slowly, the village folk came to accept and “love” Algren. One day, he finds a box left out for him containing kimono and hakama, which he picks up and dons perfectly, all by himself! Modern Japanese, used to Western clothing, need to take lessons to learn how to put on traditional clothing… but Algren has this uncanny intuition…
One “cute” thing I noticed: In some of the scenes that show Algren walking through a town or village in Japan, and the various local “extras” are supposed to look up and register some kind of shock/awe/amazement when they see the “strange hairy foreign barbarian” walk by… what you actually see on their faces is “OOH! It’s TOM CRUISE!!!”
All in all, you’ll enjoy this movie most if you just leave your disbelief at home, don’t question anything, and just enjoy it as a (no deeper than a Dixie Cup) fantasy-action movie.
Not sure about this, but some parts of southern Japan are pretty tropical. But not anywhere near Tokyo/Edo, where I think the movie was set was close to. Still, its a nitpicking flaw.
Beautifully set, but a trite plot, and the ending deserves a huge rolleyes. The biggest relief was that Tom Cruise was not his usual smirking, abusive, asshole self. He actually seemed to be trying for humility, which is clearly an unnatural state for him.
All in all a decent movie. Problem is that every year there is some Mega-blockbuster Braveheart/Gladiator/Dances With Wolves period piece war epic. Not counting LOTR, we had three in 2003(Last Samuri, Cold Mountain and Master & Commander) and The Alamo, Troy and two Alexander the Great movies coming out 2004. There’s only so many ways you can watch epic battles across beautifully cinemagraphimacated scenary.
After awhile one rousing speach preceding a last-ditch battle against overwhelming odds looks like another.
I have to take issue with this. Generally speaking, comments like, “You’re over-analyzing it. It’s just supposed to be fun,” are annoying, but it’s hard to argue with that they’re wrong when the subject is “The Enterprise v. a Star Destroyer.” The Last Samurai, however, is being marketed as a “serious” movie. It’s being pushed as an Oscar contender. The plot is obviously trying to make some sort of philosophical or moral point, although it muddles it hopelessly. While I agree that the movie can only work if you take it as fantasy entertainment, it has aspirations (delusion, one might say) of being taken as “great art,” and ought to be discussed as such, if only to illustrate why it fails in that goal.
Well, I saw it over the New Year’s break with my wife and her friends, and I was pretty impressed with the whole thing. Cruise was better than I expected (and much better than I’d initially feared when I saw the first trailers almost a year ago), and Ken Watanabe was great.
I was also pleased, in my own nitpicky way, that houses, furnishings and daily life in the village all seemed to be pretty accurate. The people making this one put some real effort into it.