Solid film that should have been great

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2003)

I liked this movie a lot, and it's definately worth seeing, but when you think about it, it's predictable. If you've seen the trailer you can guess the structure of the entire plot, and I was sorry to see that the final battle scene was lifted straight out of Braveheart. I wonder if it would have been better if Tom Cruise wasn't in it, and they just told the story of the Meiji Restoration period in Japan. It felt silly that we had to throw a white guy into the middle of this critical point in Japan's history to make it appealing to american audiances.