The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai is the story of Civil War hero Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) who is hired by the Japanese government to train its new modern army and in order to defeat the samurai who have ruled that land for hundreds of years. Leading the samurai resistance is a kind, cultured, educated samurai by the name Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Captain Algren becomes Katsumoto's captive after their first encounter in battle. Captain Algren is forced to spend the winter at the samurai camp where he is treated less like an enemy and more like a curiosity. He finds that the people in the village where he is kept our kind and generous beyond anything that people would see today. They possess a self-discipline unmatched in the world and they apply it to everything that they do. Eventually, he becomes friends with Katsumoto and learns what it is to be a samurai. After the winter is passed he is taken back to Tokyo and released unharmed from this point forward he dedicates his life to the way of the samurai even when it forces him to go into battle on the side of the samurai against the very men he had been training. For all those who have dreamt of the old days of honor and chivalry wishing they could have been alive when those things meant something and wondered what happened to it all this movie will be like a window back through time to the moment when the last flickering flames of honor and chivalry in the world were stomped out into darkness. Director Edward Zwick has captured in this film what it was to be a samurai and what it must have been like to be the last samurai. This film is truly poetic from its narration to its cinematography in the way that it captures a time in world long forgotten and lost.