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	Last Samurai
		The Last Samurai was filmed in Japan on Oct 2002, for a period of one week.
		The Last Samurai is directed by Edward Zwick and is set in Japan in the 1870's.
		Tom Cruise is met with many angry Samurai Warriors who find his presence to be a threat to their way of life and the samurai warrior code.
	last-samurai.gungfu.com (152 words)

	The Last Samurai Movie Review at Hollywood Video
		The Last Samurai is an intensely fierce film—fierce in story, fierce in ideas, and with fighting so fierce and tightly choreographed you'll wince at its speed and accuracy.
		A final insult to the samurai tradition was the decree that the warriors were to turn in their swords, the weapons that had been handed down for generations and were the heart and soul of the warrior ethos.
		It's worth noting that the samurais, for all their admirable courage and honor, were really the reactionaries in feudal Japan, the representatives of an authoritarian system, standing in the way of political change, women's rights, and land reform, as well as a modern military.
	www.hollywoodvideo.com /movies/movie.aspx?mid=137727 (1996 words)

	History in the Movies
		A. The movie presents the samurai in a mythic light (which certainly contributed to its huge success in Japanese theaters.) The film's samurai are the guardians of traditional Japanese virtues.
		Samurai did value a cultural artfulness, which meant not only sophisticated skill in weaponry, but also the ability to marvel over a cherry blossom's beauty.
		And samurai were known to choose suicide over disgrace, though perhaps not as commonly as myth would have it.
	www.stfrancis.edu /historyinthemovies/lastsamurai.htm (706 words)

	THE LAST SAMURAI
		In Samurai, Cruise's path to redemption kicks off in the late 1870s, where his Nathan Algren, a heroic Civil War captain, is shown drunkenly promoting rifles for Winchester before a frightened crowd of San Franciscans.
		Nathan has frittered away his last penny, which makes it pretty easy for him to accept a lucrative offer presented by his former sergeant (Billy Connolly, White Oleander).
		Nathan ends up being captured, but thanks to his pluckiness and the general goodwill of the samurai people, he's taken back to their village.
	www.sick-boy.com /lastsamurai.htm (510 words)

	CNN.com - Review: Cruise brilliant in 'Last Samurai' - Dec. 4, 2003
		"Samurai" is a spectacular epic adventure, and Cruise is stunning as Captain Nathan Algren, a Union soldier from the Civil War who loses his soul on the battlefield and sells himself off to the Japanese Imperial Army as a mercenary.
		Standing in his way is the ancient culture of the samurai and those warriors' strict dedication to protecting their emperor -- and their way of life -- with traditional weapons of arrows and spears.
		The samurai way of life restores his faith in the human spirit and reminds him that sacrifice in the service of a noble moral code is still worth fighting for.
	www.cnn.com /2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/04/review.samurai/index.html (1057 words)

	The Last Samurai (2003)
		In the face of an enemy, in the Heart of One Man, Lies the Soul of a Warrior.
		An American military advisor embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy after he is captured in battle.
		Having been defeated and held captive by the enemy, he gradually begins to understand and develop a great respect for the man who should be his adversary.
	www.imdb.com /title/tt0325710 (581 words)

	Latino Review
		Through a six-month period Algren learns the customs of Katsumoto's village, the art of the samurai and despite a rivalry with Ujio (Hiro Sanada), the second in command, he finds redemption and comes to the conclusion that their way of life must be protected.
		Such a people were the samurai whose values were no longer held in the same esteem as in the past and were willing to lay down their lives for those values, no matter the cost or odds.
		It's a shame that when American audiences think of a samurai movie blood and guts come to mind, but the filmmakers and even Cruise seem to wisely grasp that the meaning of the word and the nature of the code exists as a principle, not a force of destructive power.
	www.latinoreview.com /films_2003/wb/lastsamurai/review-2.html (1506 words)

	HD DVD Review: The Last Samurai \| High-Def Digest
		'Last Samurai,' like Warner's other two initial HD DVD offerings ('Million Dollar Baby' and 'Phantom of the Opera') showcases the movie by encoding it at 1080p -- meaning you're going to get every last pixel of the HD format's absolute maximum 1,920 x 1,080 resolution.
		So that caveat aside, I watched 'Last Samurai' via the Toshiba HD-XA1's HDMI 1080i output, and I also did comparisons via the player's component output (which is still the best input the majority of HDTV sets on the market can accept).
		Watching the standard DVD of 'Samurai' upconverted to 1080i, I'd say it was about 15 percent better than the 480p out, with a sharper picture and surprisingly richer fls (which I wasn't expecting).
	hddvd.highdefdigest.com /lastsamurai.html (3222 words)

	SCREEN IT! PARENTAL REVIEW: THE LAST SAMURAI
		The samurai then rush the soldiers and a great deal of hand to hand fighting occurs (with slicing, stabbing, hitting, shooting, etc.), including Algren slicing an enemy vertically down his face (with bloody results).
		A defeated former samurai prepares to commit hara-kiri (stabbing himself in the gut) and we then see him do that (but the camera is behind his back, so we don't see the impact).
		One samurai is then shot and wounded, rescued, and then left behind to allow the others to escape by killing more soldiers with arrows before being shot repeatedly and killed.
	www.screenit.com /movies/2003/the_last_samurai.html (3137 words)

	DVD Verdict Review - The Last Samurai
		The Last Samurai is an impressive spectacle of a film, capturing Japan in its growing pains as it shifts from an insular, tradition-bound feudal society to a modern industrial state.
		The Last Samurai is an epic in every sense of the word, immersing the viewer in the culture and sights of Meiji Japan for over two and a half hours.
		As a caveat to all of this, it bears consideration that The Last Samurai was very well received in Japan, where it was seen as a sincere and fitting tribute to a bygone era and the samurai ethic of duty and honor.
	www.dvdverdict.com /reviews/lastsamurai.php (3343 words)

	Violence, East and West: The Last Samurai
		In his last picture, after a score of chambara where sword-skill was the only hope for survival, Misumi opts for an ironic twist in The Last Samurai: characters must either perish or accept that, as Sugi proclaims, “it's no longer the age of the sword”.
		Shintaro Katsu's last appearance in chambara was as the hapless, drunken ronin “Bull” Goemon in the flaccid remake of Ronin-gai (Kazuo Kuroki, 1990).
		But the similarities to certain samurai films –; the epic structure, the chanting narrator, the sword-play, the supernatural interventions, even the insistent drum beating on the music rack – are all merely borrowed from Kurosawa of 25 years prior.
	www.sensesofcinema.com /contents/04/30/last_samurai.html (5599 words)

	The Last Samurai (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Well, over half of the dialogue in The Last Samurai is in Japanese, requiring lazy audiences to invest a little more in their moviegoing experience.
		The final battle, where Algren fights for the Samurai, is a spectacularly filmed piece of work, with what looks like hundreds of extras on both sides, the Samurai and the Japanese army, fighting a lop-sided battle of the past against the future.
		The battle lasts quite a long time but loses steam when it's clear the movie is beginning the ending sequences.
	www.haro-online.com /movies/last_samurai.html (994 words)

	Last Samurai, The (2003): Reviews
		As he encounters the Samurai traditions, the troubled American soldier finds himself at the center of a violent and epic struggle between two eras and two worlds, with only his sense of honor to guide him.
		The Last Samurai is an idyll in which the savageries of existence are transcended by spiritual devotion.
		In The Last Samurai, the body count is almost as high as the dead-brain-cell count.
	www.metacritic.com /film/titles/lastsamurai (1513 words)

	the last samurai
		Bearded and long-haired, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai is a movie star's egocentric dream of noble machismo -- the white man who enters a foreign culture, an ancient warrior class, and proves himself worthy.
		The leader of the samurai, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), sees how fiercely Algren defends himself (to point up Algren's superhuman ferocity, director Edward Zwick -- never one for subtlety -- zeroes in on a flagpole Algren uses to hold off his attackers, the flag emblazoned with a growling tiger) and orders him taken alive.
		Back at samurai headquarters, Algren is nursed back to health by the widow (played by the model Koyuki) of one of the samurai he killed.
	www.angelfire.com /movies/oc/lastsamurai.html (589 words)

	Movie Review - The Last Samurai - www.ericdsnider.com - The Official Website of Eric D. Snider
		He rode with Custer during his infamous Last Stand and is haunted by memories of war's brutality, made worse by his current occupation, which requires him every day to regale listeners with war stories as he demonstrates the quality of Winchester's guns.
		The samurai, who feel the emperor is moving too fast toward modernization (and which they fear means Westernization), are mounting a rebellion against the emperor.
		His men are not nearly as well-trained in the art of war as the samurai are, but with guns, they should be able to defend themselves.
	www.ericdsnider.com /movies/the-last-samurai (687 words)

	The Last Samurai review - movie review of the Edward Zwick film starring Tom Cruise
		The Last Samurai is old style Hollywood, bringing us back to the 60's, when action films could have panache and a soul, even if their melodramatic tones would make you smile.
		From the beginning with its ghost-like apparition of the samurais which serves to build the myth and is reminiscent of John Mc Tiernan's Thirteenth Warrior, to the final heroic sequence, the film shows a sense of violence and glory we haven't seen since Braveheart.
		This is a respectful homage of a man who loves old samurai films and an academic way to introduce them to the mainstream audience, kind of what Tarantino did in Kill Bill with an edge.
	www.plume-noire.com /movies/reviews/thelastsamurai.html (654 words)

	Filmtracks: The Last Samurai (Hans Zimmer) (Site not responding. Last check: )
		For The Last Samurai, Zwick presents a fresh and new story of an American Civil War captain who is hired by the Emperor of Japan to help train and modernize the Japanese military so that it can wipe out the remaining Samurai warriors and make Japan into a more Westernized, trade-friendly nation.
		As this captain (Tom Cruise) learns more about the Samurai during the process of preparing for their eradication, he becomes affected by their mentality and bravery, and he is thus caught in a conflict of interest that would lead him to learn the ways of the Samurai himself.
		The Los Angeles orchestra hired for The Last Samurai was relatively small, necessitating the use of the electronics to flesh out their sound, and why the orchestra couldn't have been fuller is another reasonable question to ask.
	www.filmtracks.com /titles/last_samurai.html (1136 words)

	The Last Samurai
		Overwhelmed and frightened by the samurai, Algren's troops panic and retreat leaving him to fight off a group of samurai by himself.
		A marvelous, epic and vivid film of the sort David Lean might have made if he were American, "The Last Samurai" deals in many of the same themes that fascinated Lean; the adoption of foreign ways by a westerner and a fascination with the culture clash when west meets east.
		Although it's a flawed film, "The Last Samurai" carries on a powerful tradition; it has depth, something to say and is enormously entertaining.
	www.mediascreen.com /l/lastsamurai.htm (948 words)

	The Last Samurai (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Then, thrown too early into a battle with rebel samurai warriors, he's captured and brought to a small village high in the mountains as a prisoner of war.
		Not enough back story is presented in the film to fully discern whether or not the samurai way of life is one worth dying for (history would seem to indicate otherwise; read my "Conclusion" for more on that), but within this film's context it is one of honor, respect, humility and servant-leadership.
		Onscreen, the samurai are "strong and courageous warriors, schooled with swords." In real life (says National Geographic's Stefan Lovgren), they were an "elitist and (for two centuries) idle class that spent more time drinking and gambling than cutting down enemies on the battlefield." That doesn't faze director Edward Zwick.
	www.pluggedinonline.com /movies/movies/a0001585.cfm (1566 words)

	The Last Samurai (2003)
		History vs. Hollywood: The Last Samurai is a History Channel special that attempts to separate fact from fiction, but does so in a rather generalized and over-stylized fashion that armchair historians won't find all that enlightening.
		Although I'd personally rather see samurai combating invading Mongols in their greatest victory, this is still a stirring battle sequence that shows the samurai using every advantage they possess against a modern army.
		The first appearance of the samurai in full regalia wearing their frightening headgear with horns and gruesome face masks is shown to have the exact effect on the enemy that they were really intended to have.
	www.kungfucinema.com /reviews/lastsamurai.htm (1791 words)

	Asia Pacific Arts Online Magazine (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Twelve years ago, Kevin Costner achieved international stardom with his epic of the Dakota Sioux, "Dances with Wolves." Like his counterpart in "The Last Samurai," Costner's Lt. John Dunbar defects from the American Calvary to join a people whose way of life is threatened with extinction.
		While this is historically accurate-Japan did open its borders around 1867 ushering in an age known as the Meiji period- the question of whether the last of the Samurai would so easily welcome a foreigner into its ranks is debatable.
		Their advertisement rests on the inference that Cruise's Capt. Algren is in fact the last samurai.
	www.asiaarts.ucla.edu /121203/samurai.html (993 words)

	The Last Samurai
		In Cruise’s defense, The Last Samurai is an all around poorly directed Hollywood big budget film that will unfortunately probably cater to the masses that have never seen one of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films, nor Kill Bill: Volume 1 for that matter.
		The Last Samurai opens as drunken Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise) is pushed on stage to tell of his days as a hero in the Civil War.
		I equate The Last Samurai with The Patriot.
	www.geocities.com /fidelio1st/film/lastsamurai.html (785 words)

	Amazon.com: The Last Samurai: Books: Helen Dewitt (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Helen DeWitt's extraordinary debut, The Last Samurai, centers on the relationship between Sibylla, a single mother of precocious and rigorous intelligence, and her son, who, owing to his mother's singular attitude to education, develops into a prodigy of learning.
		The Last Samurai is about the pleasure of ideas, the rich varieties of human thought, the possibilities that life offers us, and, ultimately, the balance between the structures we make of the world and the chaos that it proffers in return.
		The Last Samurai is written in a style that encouraged me to volunteer much more of my emotions into the interpretation of the events.
	www.amazon.com /Last-Samurai-Helen-Dewitt/dp/0786887001 (1952 words)

	AMCTV.com SHOW - The Last Samurai
		When the Samurai resist the change and decide to fight the new army they win a decisive victory and capture Algren.
		In captivity Algren becomes immersed in the samurai culture that he was charged with destroying.
		He comes to respect the Samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) and adopts the samurai way of life, assisting in the fight against the modern army that he helped to train.
	www.amctv.com /show/detail?CID=63271-1-EST (108 words)

	The Last Samurai
		He then watched in anguish as the Meiji government, in its drive to modernize the country, stripped the samurai of all that made them samurai — the representatives of Japanese tradition, honor, and glory, if also feudal privilege.
		Ravina examines how Saigo's understanding of samurai honor led him first, to overthrow the shogun in the name of the emperor, then to support a radical reformist government, and finally to rebel against a government he had helped to establish.
		In this dramatic story of politics and rebellion, the author examines in gripping detail the clash between Saigo's samurai ideals and impending Japanese modernity — and the reasons why Saigo has been revered for his courage and integrity until the present day.
	www.history.emory.edu /RAVINA/lastsamurai.html (237 words)

	The Last Samurai
		Seizo Fukumoto, who plays the Silent Samurai, is an alumnus of countless Japanese Samurai films and known for his expertise at Kirareyaku roles (a Samurai who often dies at the hands of the hero), and postponed his retirement to participate in The Last Samurai.
		The Last Samurai is the first film to shoot in Himeji, but the village boasts a much more impressive landmark in the form of the Engyoji Temple and Monastery, the production's first shooting location, which served as the country residence for Katsumoto and his loyal followers.
		As the director points out, when the Samurai appear out of a mist-shrouded forest, descending upon the ill-prepared Imperial Army like ghostly demons, "the idea was that the Samurai would use the cover of fog for surprise, allowing them to attack swiftly and suddenly, at their discretion.
	www.warnerbros.co.uk /movies/lastsamurai/prod_notesData.html (10616 words)

	The Last Samurai
		Samurai leader Ken Watanabe is initially skeptical of American Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai."
		The final section awesomely pits a large modern army against the samurai in battle, where Nathan and Katsumoto seek to neutralize the big guns and reduce things to hand-to-hand combat where the samurai might prevail.
		Cruise's transformation into a samurai is convincing as the actor makes us understand that this the only way he can reclaim his soul.
	www.hollywoodreporter.com /thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2042611 (926 words)

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