The Last Samurai (2003)
Tom Cruise stars in this drama set in late 1800s Japan that was filmed largely in New Zealand and features a supporting cast including Ken Watanabe and Billy Connolly. An American cavalry captain goes to Japan to train the emperor’s new army against a samurai rebellion.
A lot of the plot of this film is similar to other efforts you will see, the hero goes to fight one side of “savages” and ends up switching sides but like a lot of similar films is also very well made despite it's derivative nature. In short this is exactly the sort of film Hollywood likes to churn out in various settings and does well. The film is well directed with some excellent locations, good acting and decent characters and the action sequences and sword play are good.
When it comes to the source material for the film it does appear that history has been pillaged fairly heavily to provide a romanised view of the samurai way of life that does not reflect real events especially well. It is also disappointing that there is no consideration of the possible negatives of the samurai way of life given that the system seems to rely heavily on caste/class and it's possibility for abuse of certain elements as was done by the WW2 era Japanese government for propaganda purposes.
4/5 as pure entertainment but not to be taken seriously.
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