My take on THE LAST SAMURAI movie

Why this film?

Movie Poster

 So after a while, I took a small pause in my gaming routine to watch few movies that's been on my watchlist for so long. One such movie that I watched, and took a liking to is "The Last Samurai". 

The movie talks about the life of an American captain who goes to Japan to train the Imperial army about the western warcraft, but got a chance to know about his enemies, the samurai. What happened next and how the war between the samurais and the imperial army went is the rest of the film. 

Historic resemblance 

Jules Brunet

Jules Brunet was a French Military officer who was sent to Japan just like Captain Algren(Tom Cruise's character in the film). He was initially sent as an instructor to teach the soldiers of the western military weapons but chose to stay and fight alongside the Tokugawa Shogunate. I'm not going to talk about history here because there are few facts that I can't verify and so to avoid misleading readers, I decided to skip talking about him and the Meiji restoration.

So as far as I'm concerned, and reading about other articles, the story almost is similar to the real life Brunet's story but not entirely. 

The Story..

The movie starts with Captain Algren, a civil war veteran who drinks to overcome PTSD about his actions he did during his past war days. At that time, the Omura Family approaches Captain Algren and his former commanding officer Bagley to train a new Japanese Imperial Army with western weapons. They agree and reach Japan to train the inexperienced Japanese soldiers about western warcraft. 

During their training, Algren finds out that the soldiers were nothing but peasants and they had no prior war training. But ignoring this fact, Omura insisted them to face off against the samurai who attacked Omura's railroad. The result was well known since they were nothing more than peasants while their opponents were samurais who train their whole life for this.

Injured Algren was taken as war hostage, who in the process of defending himself, killed the samurai leader Katsumoto's brother-in-law. Algren was treated in Katsumoto's sister's home. Initially, he was despised by the people in the village. But as the days passed, he learnt the ways of the samurai and was respected by the people. He even saved Katsumoto's and his family's life against a ninja attack sent by Omura.

Katsumoto then meets with the Emperor to talk things out but things got out of hand. New rules were implemented against the samurais and Katsumoto was arrested. Algren decides to help him and the samurais. In the mean time, the imperial army got trained with new weapons and tanks. So Algren joins the samurai and lead their army against modern weaponry. 

The battle is an all-out war where we know what the outcome is. The surprise for me is that how Algren was the only man that survived this. That was kinda unrealistic and hard-to-swallow pill for me. But as far as the story is concerned, I personally like it. Be it the acting of the individual actors, or the screenplay, I loved every part of it. Tom Cruise, Ken Watanbe, Kiyoki, Hiroyuki Sanada, Timothy Spall all were extraordinary.

The depiction of Edo Japan, the character design, the location, the culture everything was worth jaw-dropping. I was so much inspired already by anime and its on my to-do list to visit Japan for almost 2 years now and this movie just increased it a bit. The one scene that's close to my heart is when Katsumoto requests Algren to help him end his life, to die in honor. That clearly shows the determination in the mind of the samurais. 

Though the movie may depict the imperials in a bad shade, I saw the movie just as a form of art and based on the story, I'm on samurais' side. But historically, I do not know who's right. So whatever my opinion is, it is purely based on and only on the movie.

So if you watch historic movies, war movies and stuffs, you can give this movie a try. I can vouch for this movie. If you've already watched the movie, comment your opinion and you can watch it and comment later. See you guys in the next post. Peace.