A moving celebration of life.

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2003)

Overall The Last Samurai is a beautifully written document visualized by some of the top professionals of the film trade. It is a fiction; however, an overlay nesting over a historical period of transition in Japan as it begins to embrace the West after centuries of isolation.

All of the finest production values are in place. My most ardent complaint is the selection of Tom Cruise as the protagonist. At no point in the picture did I or could I forget that I was looking at Tom Cruise playing a part. This single quirk withheld the moviegoing experience from its promise of sufficiency for me.
Still, I must recommend the film. It is powerfully moving and produced with the artistry that only the top professionals in the pixbiz can accomplish. More than likely we all know the film's Logline: A man who loses his soul on the killing fields of the late 19th Century Indian Wars of the American West finds it again in the far Eastern spiritual vortex of a Japan also in transition.
The movie suggests that those who embraced Samurai and its Bushido Code were all noble, decent men, which is of course not true. Yet embedded within the concept of Samurai (which most us know means "to serve") is the idea of honor. In this idea we see that there was never really a "last Samurai" in Japan but that Samurai underwent spiritual transition to a work and production ethic. This ethic today leads the entire world in peerless industrial achievement and products that are generally unmatched in quality by any other nation.