"THE LAST SAMURAI" - Man, it's ALWAYS about the one white guy in the film, isn't it?

[Kristoffer]

nanja korya?
TLS was awsome, could have been more bloody though. And I wanted more Ninja action!

[GeneChing]

I liked the film's scenery, but the story seemed to similar to the Shogun miniseries starring Richard Chamberlin in the early 80's.
*spoiler alert* The final scene, Samurai charging into the artillery volleys was done so much better by Kurosawa, that Last Samurai really paled by comparison. Still, I was hoping for a little more impact on our Samurai Sword sales, given the nature of the film, so I'm always in favor of that.

What irritated me the most about the film was that it failed to observe basic sword etiquette. It began with this notion of the Japanese veneration the sword, then failed to show the tradition of the weapon any respect at all. Japanese swordmanship is strictly codified, it's a product of that veneration, so there are specific ways to handle a sword, how to pass it to another person, etc,. and these rules are based on intelligent behaviors for self defense. The movie repeatedly defied these simple etiquette rules, for no reason at all. That, for me, was it's complete undoing. I could live with Tom's choreography, since he has a fine nose*, but I disdain poor etiquette.

*it's never the nose alone, it's always in context of the face.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by Mat


I enjoyed the movie but SPOILER Tom should have died. Very surprised at Zwick who has stated that Kurosawa was one of his faves. The only acceptible ending was Cruise biting the big one.

YES! I couldn't agree more!