Would have been great if not so overdramatic

Rating: 7/10 (10 December 2003)

This is a good film, the acting is good, as well as the story and battle sequences. In particular, I was impressed with Ken Watanabe's acting as the samurai lord. The special effects in the battles (standard explosions with horses falling and guys spinning away to their death in sword fights) and 1800's style backgrounds were decent (you can obviously tell the backgrounds in San Francisco and Tokyo are paintings in the background). The costumes were very well done, and depicted the era quite well.

Now a couple of the fight sequences were not that great. The opening battle is fantastic, and the end battle is good as well (the Tokyo street fight with Tom Cruise was ok). The fight when the ninjas attack the village was well done for the most part except for the silly timing of the attacks towards the end of the sequence (the ninjas ran through the door in groups of two, when one group was finished off, the next two jumped through the door to attack). Some better editing could have made this look less choreographed.

The only fight sequence that got on my nerves was the escape scene. This was just poorly done. Cheesy effects (like the exploding pellets on both sides of the bridge handle bars as Tom Cruise ran down the middle) and the ridiculous repeat shot of guards getting hit with an arrow in the exact same corner over and over. Coupled with the overdramatic death of one samurai, made this scene just plain annoying. This over-dramatic death is similar to the prince of Gondor at the end of the first Lord of the Rings movie, but better editing in that movie made that scene more subtle.

Finally, the fact that everyone was on the verge of tears or just plain crying in every other scene was just really overdramatic. Some would have been fine to show the character's passion, but this was overdone.