The film that Dances with Wolves is glad it is not.

Rating: 5/10 (8 April 2009)

SPOILER WARNING!!!
When I first saw this movie as a 14/15 year old guttersnipe, I was dead impressed. Exciting, thought provoking, touching, everything an epic needs!
Of course, now I am older and wiser and understand that this movie is trying to do what many of these epics have churned out time and time before.
132-133 years into the past into Japan in 1876-1877 (well, actually it starts in America), Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise) is parading the brand new lever-action Winchester in fairs around the country as part of America's centenary, (though sometimes losing his PTSD-riddled rag completely) and begins working for his detested and despised commanding officer Colonel Bagley to train the Japanese army in modern warfare.
Going over, Algren is peed off that he is "subduing another tribal rebellion" while at the same time stating that he "doesn't give a damn about the Samurai" (though they pretty much have the lie of the land here and are more than a mere tribe, let's face it! They have dirty great swords for pete's sake!) and after some poor decision making by his superior officers (just like in real life), the hastily-trained Japanese infantry is pitted against the Samurai and is knocked for six.
The only survivor who doesn't desert the battlefield is Algren, and Katsumoto (Watanabe) is impressed enough to take him alive. (Though this is also partly to do with the horrendous claptrap that is "destiny".)
From here on, the story is predictable. Algren is taken prisoner by the Samurai, Algren is impressed at these people as spiritual and self-disciplined warriors. Algren switches sides.
Back then, I didn't see the pretentiousness of the "noble savage" mantra that is constantly trotted out by unthinking Hollywood execs for unthinking Hollywood-junkie sheep. The Samurai didn't rebel to protect their way of life, the Samurai rebelled because the emperor had slashed their paycheck! Their women had no rights, there were untouchables in their village, progress of the human race isn't necessarily an evil thing, especially if it means that you have no right to carry a sharp sword around to randomly cut someone's head off! (Actually, there is an amusing deleted scene on the DVD where one of the Samurai beheads a smirking passer-by and somehow Algren marvels at him as he walks off - but clearly they realised that this would be a mistake to show in the movie!)
A couple of nagging annoyances at this film are as follows:
1: The constant defaming of General Custer. Sure, he was a cretin for leading his men into the Little Big Horn massacre, but he wasn't as bad as painted, not necessarily a murderer because he was quoted by an anti-Indian journalist to saying "if I was an Indian, I'd rather live on the open plains than submit to the confines of a reservation. But I have my orders to subdue them, and return them to the reservations." He also voiced concern over rough treatment of the Indians on these reservations. The 1868 Washita incident (or - as said and as shown in Algren's flashbacks - massacre) is a rather ambiguous one though, because despite it's depiction in the film being according to the Massacre accounts where the majority of casualties were unarmed women and children, some stories paint a different light that it was a battle, but the women and children were rounded up to a reservation after being used as a human shield from more Indians and were photographed aftewards according to the BBC, so it's hard to know which to believe. But if he is a "murderer who fell in love with his own legend" as Algren puts it, isn't the final battle an echo of this?
2: The glorification of honour and the literally "death or glory" culture of the Samurai is rather dubious to be the basis as an attempt to show them as the "noble stewards of the land" when they carry swords that can cut your head off (and would do so just as soon as look at you). I also find the "Samurai-traditions-good-western-culture-bad" somewhat confusing considering that the western culture does have bonuses like giving people decent human rights for once! Plus the fact that the Bushido code is the glorification of a code that inspired the Japanese armies to wreak havoc among the Chinese during the Nanking massacre (Look it up if you want the proper details, it is not pleasant!), and to slam their planes into ships long before the Saudis got the same idea to repeat the exercise with jumbo jets and buildings in New York back in 2001!
3: The sentimentality in this film is incredible, there's enough of it here to make The Little Mermaid look down to earth! The rubbish about destiny (I believe destiny is a monstrous pile of bull butter) and not even trying to change it (i.e. the reason why the Samurai didn't use firearms - to avoid screwing about with "fate", increasing the risk of being massacred!), and the confusing reason as to why a Japanese Samurai wife and caring mother of two would forgive the man who'd slain her husband and actually got with him!
Having moaned myself to death however, I will concede that there are some nice touches in this film. The Samurai battles are excellent and riveting, and Billy Connolly is a saving grace as a sadly short-lived Irish soldier character at the beginning of the film with some excellent lines. The settings of post-feudal Japan and the epic backdrops are very well pulled off. So if you have listened to this review and are not put off and still wish to see this film, please switch your brain off before doing so, otherwise you might just drown in a sea of sopping wet sugar!