The Last Samurai

    The Last Samurai
    2003

    Synopsis

    Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.

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    Cast

    • Tom CruiseNathan Algren
    • Ken WatanabeMoritsugu Katsumoto
    • Timothy SpallSimon Graham
    • Tony GoldwynCol. Benjamin Bagley
    • Hiroyuki SanadaUjio
    • KoyukiTaka
    • Shin KoyamadaNobutada
    • Billy ConnollyZebulon Gant
    • Togo IgawaGeneral Hasegawa
    • Shichinosuke NakamuraEmperor Meiji

    Recommendations

    • 90

      Time

      A movie that demands our surrender -- to its energy, to its bold-stroke moviemaking, to its acting (particularly by Cruise and Watanabe, who blend musing and graceful muscularity) and, above all, to its romantic vision of a lost world.
    • 88

      ReelViews

      A rousing tale that combines high adventure with emotional effectiveness. This movie works because it never loses sight of the characters no matter how epic the scope becomes.
    • 80

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Hugely satisfying entertainment that will attract a broad spectrum of audiences around the world. Zwick fully exploits the star power at his disposal, pairing off Cruise and Japanese star Ken Watanabe as two larger-than-life warriors.
    • 75

      Entertainment Weekly

      A handsome epic, a brave-hearted 19th-century man-saga from the director who made the period piece man-sagas ''Glory'' and ''Legends of the Fall.''
    • 60

      New York Magazine (Vulture)

      The Last Samurai is an idyll in which the savageries of existence are transcended by spiritual devotion. That’s a beautiful dream, and it gives the film a deep pleasingness, but the fullness of life and its blackest ambiguities are sacrificed.
    • 60

      L.A. Weekly

      The only history that bears a real influence on The Last Samurai is the history of Hollywood moviemaking, and the unfortunate way it has of turning extraordinary stories into hopelessly ordinary ones.
    • 50

      Variety

      As rich in period and historical background as it is deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas.
    • 50

      The New Yorker

      Zwick can’t find anything fresh in this deeply pious East-meets-West stuff. The movie comes close to dying between battle scenes. [8 December 2003, p. 139]

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