The Last Samurai Options

[Crushinator]

I just saw this film on Friday, and holeee cow, what an amazing movie!

The direction...the actors...the story...the music. God, this movie just came together in all the right ways, and the ending was truely moving. You actually got a feeling for how the traditional Japanese way of life slipped away with the Imperial move toward modernism in the Meiji era.

Of course the battles seem like the main attraction at first, and they don't disappoint. Its devoid of any of the wire-fu bullshit that plagues most movies nowadays, and is just pure Samurai-Calvarymen asskicking, simple and beautiful.

The true heart of the movie, however, is the story. Tom Cruise's character, haunted by his atrocities commited against Native Americans in his service in the US Army, becomes awakened, just like the audience, to the purity and discipline of the traditional Japanese lifestyle. Sent to the destroy the Samurai "Rebel Savages" he finds his peace, and true destiny as a warrior defending the Bushido, and the Samurai that protect it.

For me, this movie rang with the bittersweetness of "Glory" (also by the same director), and it is truely a man's movie, about coming to terms with your past, seeing your enemy eye-to-eye as an equal, and living with honor and discipline.

*SPOILER*




Oh hell yeah and there are NINJAS in it! I almost shit my pants when they flipped out, I never expected ninjas!




*/SPOILER*