engaging, poignant, and elegant.

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2004)

i found the last samurai engaging, poignant, and elegant. further i loved the way the director pays tribute to classic japanese samurai films. there are, for example, multiple allusions to inozaki's "chushingura," perhaps the greatest of samurai epics: the hero and his son fight together, a warrior is unsuccessfully trying to finish his poem before the last battle, the common folk bow to the samurai at the end. much much better than the trailer and the reviews led me to expect.
take just one detail: compare two archers in battle: katsumoto's son and legolas of rotk. no contest for me; katsumoto's son is the more athletic, the more heroic, and even the gentler.