The film television actually did better

Rating: 3/10 (5 July 2005)

There's nothing wrong about this film - except pretty much everything. I.e., the film is fairly well directed, with enough money in production to give it a good look. The problem is that it is poorly thought-through, miscast, and politically and historically ill-conceived.
Actually, a much better story along similar lines was produced years ago on American television: "Shogun", with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. That pains me to say. While I love Toshiro Mifune (hard to dislike, really), I hated Chamberlain and thought "Shogun" one of the more boring episodes in American TV history. But, dammit, the writers of that "mini-series" actually did their homework and got it right! Anyone familiar with Japanese culture had to give them the grudging respect that they had neither "Westernized" it nor subverted it.
Alas, the same cannot be claimed for "The Last Samurai". Watanabe, at 6'2', and with the most pale skin and bland features of any Japanese actor I can recall, is as about as typical of 19th Century samurai as his co-lead, Tom Cruise, who is as typical of 19th Century Americans as, say, Michael Jackson. Both over-emote embarrassingly. In America, this is as forgettable as Kevin Costner, but in Japan it's virtually criminal.
The rest of the actors all do fairly well. The depictions of life in a Japanese farming village are not insulting - they're just out of place. Samurai lived in the manor, they had little to do with the farmers supporting them. The battle scenes are very well choreographed, but utterly detached; I felt I was watching a soccer match between two teams I didn't care for. AS for the politics - did the producers, director, et all., not realize that the writers had essentially written apology for the eventual rise of the Tojo junta, which invaded China (to the tune of 36 million dead), and bombed Pearl Harbor? Not even right-wing novelist (and leader of a failed coup) Yukio Mishma had that audacity! To the Japanese right, Tojo was an embarrassment, to the left a shame. In fact he himself, converted to Christianity just prior to his hanging, hoped he wouldn't burn in hell; but no other Earthling agreed with that hope, even the Emperor condemned him.
To be fair, probably even the writers of this distasteful script did not know what they were doing. Neither did the film's investors. or they would never have sunk so much money into such a shoddy script.
See "Shogun" instead - or, better, rent some films by Kurosawa or Mizoguchi. (Actually, even some early Godzilla movies would be more representative.... Japan has a great culture; Tom Cruise is a bad actor; do the math yourself.)_