Review – The Last Samurai

Usual disclaimer: if you don’t like samurai movies as much as I do, you may well walk away with a different opinion of this than I did. However, I enjoyed it a great deal. Like Shogun, it suffers from the inherent weakness of showing Japanese culture in its effect on a westerner rather than strictly on its own terms. On the other hand, it does an excellent job of building respect for traditionalist resistance to the Meiji reformation. Sure it’s one-sided, but at least it’s one-sided on the side opposite the usual American take on the subject. Tom Cruise does a reasonably good job as an Army veteran with PTS from the wars against the Indians who takes a job training imperial Japanese troops to fight an anti-reformation insurgent and his forces. Taken prisoner, Cruise’s character comes to appreciate the merits of samurai training and commitment. Eventually he joins the rebels in their futile fight against cannon and Gattling guns. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, and the cinematography – while not quite up to Kurosawa’s standards – is nonetheless solid. Worth seeing