Last Samurai (Blu-ray) (2003)

"Ken Watanabe - what a powerful presence! What a beautiful film.  Joel Siegel, Good Morning America
"Tom Cruise is truly magnificent.  Paul Clinton, CNN
"Cruise plays the role with fierce energy and swings a Bushido blade like a pro.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Editor's Note Edward Zwick directs this sumptuously designed, action-packed period epic that stars Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren. Algren, a former Civil War hero, is adrift in 1870s San Francisco after the war, a lost soul struggling to stay afloat in a booze-soaked stupor. When he is recruited by the Japanese government to train the Emperor's army, he departs for the unknown shores of Japan and begins training the soldiers in American military tactics. But these skills are useless against a band of samurai rebels led by the proud warrior Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), and Algren is easily defeated. He is taken to a remote samurai village where he learns samurai warrior codes and ways of life, developing a deep bond with Katsumoto and sharing philosophical conversations with him. Caught between the feudal culture of the ancient samurai warriors and the encroachment of modern society, Algren is forced to choose between his own culture or Katsumoto's. THE LAST SAMURAI is lavish in its dramatic period costumes and intense performances, and will thrill fans of both historical drama and action films.

	Billy Connolly
	Chad Lindberg
	Ken Watanabe
	Masato Harada
	Ray Godshall, Sr.
	Tom Cruise
	Tony Goldwyn
	William Atherton
	Charles Mulvehill - Executive Producer
	Edward Zwick - Director
	Edward Zwick, et. al. - Screenplay
	Hans Zimmer - Original Music By
	John Logan - Story By
	John Toll - Cinematographer
	Steven Rosenblum - Editor
	Tom Cruise - Producer
	Victor Du Bois - Editor

Entertainment Weekly
"...[A] rousing, smoothly assembled historical fantasia....A handsome epic..." 12/05/2003 p.63

Rolling Stone
"...Cruise plays the role with fierce energy and swings a Bushido blade like a pro..." 12/25/2003 p.118

Sight and Sound
"[With] some of the most impressively realised battles this side of Middle Earth." 02/01/2004 p.50

New York Times
"Mr. Zwick has absorbed the lethal agility of Akira Kurosawa; what registers just as powerfully as the sureness of the combatants is the ugly futility of the battles themselves." 12/05/2003 p.E1

Los Angeles Times
"THE LAST SAMURAI affords the sort of fizzy enjoyment that can come with epic movie endeavors, including a meticulously detailed world unlike our own, an excellent supporting cast and some pulse-pounding fights." 12/05/2003 p.C1

Chicago Sun-Times
"Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic." 12/05/2003 p.39

Widescreen Review
"THE LAST SAMURAI is another stirring Civil War-era epic directed by Edward Zwick." 06/01/2006 p.61

The Guardian 7 of 10
It's a workmanlike tale told with almost enough gusto to distract you from the batsqueak of silliness audible throughout, and the final battle scene easily trumps the one currently on offer in, say, Cold Mountain. But, as with so many Cruise films, the producer-star has such a great deal of adoring camerawork lavished on those delectable chops, adorned with manly face-fungus that can never quite conceal his eerily boyish prettiness, undimmed over decades. The narcissism and self- congratulation is never far from the surface. - Peter Bradshaw

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
The Last Samurai breaks with the convention that the Western hero is always superior to the local culture he immerses in. It has been compared to Lawrence of Arabia and Dances With Wolves, films in which Westerners learn to respect Arabs and Indians, but this film goes a step further, clearly believing that Katsumoto's traditional society is superior to the modernism being unloaded by the Americans. Katsumoto is the teacher and Algren is the student, and the film wonderfully re-creates the patterns and textures of the Japanese past; its production design, sets and costumes are astonishing. - Roger Ebert