Dude I shed a tear at the end…”They are all perfect”

Emperor "Tell me how he died." Algren "I will tell you how he lived."

Wow! Thats really saying something. Only recently (20yrs later) have the japanese thought it was acceptable to clap or cheer at films

Whoa

Wow, that's incredible!

At last, someone else who understands that scene's significance.

“Perfect…they are all perfect” 🥲

Tell me how he died

@@travismcclymans5487 I will tell you how he lived

I remember this quote often myself. Like much of old traditional Japanese poetry and philosophy it's ponderous and meditative and makes you consider your values. It's a brilliant scene in a great film.

Even manages to sidestep one particularly lethal cliche such plotlines tend to fall victim to. Dances with Wolves came close, and Avatar unfortunately went full steam ahead with it. Tends to be called White Savior or White Messiah.

Man… I got chocked up just thinking about it!

True. Not many people talk about this movie. It's underrated. Some wokes criticized it as portraying white saviour narrative.

Just that scene in the rain when the samurai realized he ain’t afraid of death or anything with that music pumping epic

@@akmal9542 How is this a "white saviour" story? he failed to save everyone!

@@AshrakAhmed yea. I don't understand that remark as well when I heard it. I think they just missed the whole point of the movie.

Me too. I still remember this when I half-ass something

He was talking about samurai not the Japanese. And the reason samurai can live like that because they have serfs do work for them

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl untrue. I've been to Japan and it's part of their culture I admire very much

@@S1ipperyJim I was talking about samurai general life style

@@S1ipperyJim do you think Japanese peasants 'devoted themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursued' when they were trying to farm?

“forgive me for saying what a teacher must” it’s something about the implied respect of Japanese people toward hierarchy and tradition that even that simple line carry’s so much more weight than it normally would

It made no historical sense

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl I guess we all missed the "Based on a true story" text at the beginning. Otherwise, your moronic statment holds no value.

@@isaiasramirez8224 yeah here is the trick...... It isn't based on a true story

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl it wasn't a true story????????????? There goes my admiration for the storytelling and acting

true, he was so fun in chris broads video as we get to see Watanabe's life these days.

LET THEM FIGHT.

His escort samurai is one of the things that stood out to me as well. Great insight into the transformation of the narrative surrounding Captain Algren.

Interestingly enough, he wrote early drafts of The Great Wall.

You of course refer to the great and honourable Bob.

@@martiansoldier Bob indeed sir, unmistakeably Bob.

That's what makes this movie great. There are many such small character interactions that aren't really part of the bigger plot but are very deep and meaningful. Like the fact that he is housed in the house of the samurai who he killed and he builds relationships with that man's wife and son. The son's love for him is really heart wrenching as he sees his new father go off into a suicide mission. Very well written movie indeed.

Zimmer doing what he does best, telling the story without any lyrics.

Hans Zimmer is a modern day Beethoven.

Yes the soundtrack is EPIC!!!!

A small measure of peace never left my playlists since then.

A Way of Life is one of the most beautiful tracks I’ve ever heard

Can you please explain how it was received there? Did people mourn how that old way of life was destroyed by western influence?

That's not what happened but okay, dude 😅🤣😂😁

@Ryan Burke You may as well ask how Studio Ghibli movies are received in Japan. They're usually about the clash between unrelenting progressive business/industry and nature. The message is always the same, too, to seek to work together for a better tomorrow with mutual respect for each others cultures.

​@@Gonzooo69 *Lemme tell you in Feudal Japan, the vast majority absolutely hated the horrible SAMURAI OPPRESSORS and their inhumane 60-90% tax rates.* Where do you think all the funds to their wars comes from? Compare how both Asian and European averages were, even after accounting for unofficial/illegal corruption, were 25%. The brutal taxation is what led to MABIKI infanticide rampant throughout everywhere in Japan for centuries. In the 1500s samurai selling girls to Portuguese slavers for muskets just like African warlords (but they hardly bought cannons, their first cannon was made in 1609, having experienced its power in their invasion of Korea in the 1590s), and when that wasn't enough, setup overseas brothels to pimp their girls for war funds _(by the 19th century the girls got a derogatory nickname called Karayuki-san, "Miss Gone-to-China" where "Kara" was a colloquialism for China or all things overseas, and by the 20th century these brothels even reached Australian shores),_ or invade other countries for girls to sell to the Portuguese. After a battle, there were free-for-all peasant mobs hunting down straggler samurai cut off from retreating armies, a huge lynch mob to kill samurai and get their expensive gear some poor peasants had to pay for. This was called, "Ochimusha Kari" or "Hunt for fallen warriors." Luis Frois, a Portuguese missionary in the 1500s, testified in his book that most powerful warlord in Japan, Oda Nobunaga, pimped girls to overseas brothels for his war funds. He wrote that "when Japanese mothers think they're unable to raise babies, they kneel on their throats." Nobuhiro Sato in the mid-19th century also wrote that *1/3 of the households in Japan killed a baby each year.* (So for a house, once about every 3 years. Remember this is an era with no contraceptives, but nowhere else in the world will you see centuries of regular infanticide like this.) He even gave specific numbers for each region. In the Edo period it got especially bad because taxes that were raised for wartime still didn't go down DESPITE it was peacetime, that virtually the population growth was very close to 0% for 250 years. Just the recorded peasant uprisings numbered 3000 in this time. Of course, to keep the masses down they ruled with samurai terrorism: Kirisute Gomen, aka "samurai license to kill a peasant without any trial, reason, or repercussions." Even in towns Samurai avoided alleys in and around peasant neighborhoods, because they would be surrounded and beaten by a mob of peasants, and samurai would consider it shameful to admit they were beaten down by such lowly peasants so they would prefer to keep quiet about it. Don't be fooled by weeaboos. In the heyday of samurais, the 1400s 1500s civil war (sengoku period), they were opportunistic backstabbers with no shred of loyalty. 勝てば官軍 (負ければ賊軍) was a popular cynical expression of the peasants at the time, "Winners become the government, losers become labeled as bandits." Why be loyal to anyone at all if power is so dynamic? This concept was not restricted to the peasants either. While Japan was always a backwater in Asia for millennia, during this time of abject war you see an even sharper decline of cultural advances, where pirated bowl from the neighboring nation of Korea alone cost a fortune (look up the "Kizaemon Ido pottery" which is an officially registered National Treasure in Japan. It's homely. You see a sharp change after the invasion of Korea in 1500s, 1000s of technicians were kidnapped and forced to make advanced pottery. The best potter in Japan to this day is the 15th generation Shimsugwan, aka "Chinjukan" a Korean. Look him up). Buddhist monks too took up arms in violence, and proselytized that this is the bleak End Times where the teachings of Buddha are long gone. The Emperor was treated like a village idiot and kids even threw rocks at him for fun with no repercussions while his handmaidens prostituted themselves just to get by (1500s Emperor Go-Nara). The concept of loyalty for samurai came in the 1700s in the Edo Period when Confucianism was spread to Japan. But that too was horribly warped because while Confucius himself went around telling bloodthirsty tyrants they are evil and wrong, even when doing that was dangerous, he taught that to have a spine and correct your evil king even when he can execute you, is the ultimate loyalty. The samurai warped it to mean that ultimate loyalty = doing everything told of you unquestioningly, and even committing seppuku/harakiri suicide (Ofc, they won't tell you even committing suicide was done for money. Even the Award-winning 1962 Japanese film Hara-kiri exposed this). Complacency and being afraid to "rock the boat" became the ultimate samurai virtues after 1700s. The 1500s samurai would probably laugh at these idiots. This fascination of "unquestioning loyalty unto death" became widespread due to the book "Hagakure" by a samurai Tsunetomo Yamamoto, who never saw actual war in his life yet lamented how his "samurai aren't cool anymore like the old days," and was used to entice people in WW2 to become like samurai, by blowing themselves up in kamikazes (by plane, by torpedo, by diving suits, submarines, manned anti-tank mines, etc) for their one-true god Emperor Hirohito whom they must pray towards his Tokyo palace everyday. They were taught that killing others freed them to go to the "next life" and that their own kamikaze death enables them to go to Zen Buddhist Pure Land Paradise/become worshiped as minor Shinto gods. PS: remember I set 60% tax rate as the lower end? The popular Japanese play, Chushingura, was based on the real 47 ronin who invaded a noble house and slaughtered all the kids, servants, men, and women to "avenge" their lord who cut said noble in a fit of rage and was executed for it. This is the Genroku Ako Incident. Initially the only region in Japan where the Chushingura kabuki play was ill-received and the actors beaten and chased out of town was the region where that noble once ruled, whom they loved because unlike the other regions, he set "a low low tax rate of 60%."

My family and I ended up watching The Last Samurai five times in theaters.

Though this movie is at least closer to the source if you loosely connect it to the novel Shogun, Kingdom of Heaven gets literally every single thing it could wrong about the people and period to deliver a now quite dated Iraq War/911 allegory.

@@JCDenton3 nah I disagree on the Iraq stuff, I think you misunderstood what it was trying to say

@@roberthipolito1351 Ridley Scott literally said that was what it was an allegory for though, he made the film not me.

@@JCDenton3 wtf??? Well wouldn't be the first time he misunderstood the scripts he directs.

If you accept it as a historically-influenced but not historically accurate action movie, it works. Same with Gladiator.

Especially Collateral - probably my favorite Tom Cruise movie, and as far as I know the only time he plays a true villain.

When you think about, ther's Only really a small handfull of movies that Cruise was in, that were "Meh" at best. Nearly 90% of the movies he's in are absolutly amazing.

Tom Cruise is well known for his work ethic. He puts everything he has into his roles, and it shows.

hence why any "a Tom Cruise movie" is so enjoyable to watch. He is the last action hero of Hollywood.

I agree completely. He's obviously more than a little bit eccentric IRL, but his acting is the best. If he didn't have the weird personal life stuff I think he'd be universally lauded as the greatest actor of his generation if he isn't already despite the weirdness. Him, Daniel Day Lewis, and Keanu (though for different reasons) are the three guys that I'm almost always willing to go see in a movie. DiCaprio to some extent although he has some misses also.

He is a movie star. One of the last.

I always support the actors who just want to entertain you

Particularly, the look of shock on a face that has proven otherwise never lost its composure when he realizes just WHO it was fighting by his side.

That’s my favourite action scene from the movie, it’s one of the few movies I’ve seen where ninjas are featured as a genuinely terrifying threat, rather than some cheesy b-grade cartoon villain to be swatted aside with ease. And that look on his face at the end is what sells it. They weren’t expecting to fight unannounced battles in own homes.

The quote "when I took these from you, you were....my enemy" says it all after Katsumoto handed back Algerns journals and notes.

Man I love that scene, they go from being a happy family enjoying a play to professional warriors in a heartbeat. The shout Ujio gives at the end and the roar in reply is awesome. I've no idea what he's saying, assume it's something like "is everyone alive".

It's mostly a movie of how Western culture views Japans history. The Samurai used firearms from the 16th century and rarely used swords in wars. Also if Japan hadn't embraced Western culture it would have become just another colony of the West like all other Asian countries around it. It wasn't corrupt businessmen driving it but a smart emperor with more than one Bismarck level subordinates. It's dross. Pretty movie but about as historically accurate as Braveheart.

@@Cl0ckcl0ck Right, but most people don't care about historical accuracy if the story and characters are solid, and the themes powerful and universal. It's historical fiction. Fiction being the key word. They set the movie in a version of the past and did so because it allows them to tell the story they wanted to tell. Again. Fiction. None of the people in this movie existed in real life, except perhaps the emperor (and I don't even know that for sure).

“A Small Measure of Peace” (on my wife’s KZfaq account) is my favorite pieces of music produced by Hans Zimmer.

Absolutely correct, sir!

Every family movie night my Dad had the request, "Anybody want to watch Predator?"

Fantastic 🤣🤣

Sorry to hear about your dad, man. Hope you’re doing okay.

@@bakerfresh your dad sounds awesome 👌

I'm sorry for your loss

And not to mentioned that it sounds and looks artistically poetic, all at the same time.

Whilst the onlooking Japanese troops with their guns drop to a knee and cry

When you accept you are already dead, you no longer fear anything to come. Good soldiers almost always share that trait.

@@Judicial78 reminds me of a segment from a sci-fi book i read a while back - a surfer is standing on a beach faced by 200-foot tall 200 mile an hour tidal wave and he says 'when death is inevitable, all there is left is style... style' and he rides the face of the wave until it smashes him into a tall building.

@Nix91exactly, surviving and watching his way of life be butchered is the bad ending. Going out in battle is the samurai way.

Deep in my heart, I believe this exchange is _why_ the movie 300 got made

“Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death.” - Nagao Kagetora (Uesugi Kenshin) the Dragon of Echigo.

"They are all beautiful" in reference to the cherry blossoms always gets me.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hcuhdJunxrmdXWw.html

It’s cool, however Ninjas would never engage Samurais in open combat.

@@daneoman1000 You're right of course, but I guess it's never expressly stated that they're "ninja" in the movie. I always just thought of them as a commando team sent to take out the leader of the rebellion. I am not sure it's possible to really depict ninja accurately in a film, given the fact there's not a lot of historical information about them in the first place.

It never happened.

​@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl go away mate

@@ilikethewaysnrubberthinks truth hurts doesn't it?

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl we know. We just don’t care. This is a movie, not a documentary. Creative liberties are allowed

​@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl of course we know it didn't happen you clown.

Those scenes that just pull the emotion from you in an almost breathtaking way are few and far between. The opening of The Last of Us is that way, as well as that newer Sandra Bullock movie where she gets out of Jail. I won't spoil that if you haven't seen it, but there is a reveal that is so beautifully done IMO. I love scenes that can do that, while I hate feeling that despair in the moment, but every now and then recalibrating and getting in tune with that aspect of our humanity is cathartic.

And rhen they bust out the Gatling guns, tough to watch.

@@robertdouth8979 absolutely! Loved the tension and excitement when those Ninjas showed up while they were celebrating!

Brings me to tears every time.

it's hard to watch

That and the 'Last of the Mohicans'

Aye.

@@InfiniteNallidge also an excellent movie. If I owned them, they'd be side by side on the shelf- and not just for alphabetic reasons.

They moved from a horrible Japan. To one that was completely mad

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl But the move was probably still for the best. But it hurts to cut ties like that. That seems to be what most Japanese people who love the movie say. It's not that it's accurate in detail, but that te emotions it portrays are real. The Japanese that cut down the Samurai would probably do it again. But they understand that they lost something, and they're not happy about it. But it was time to move on. (And as you put it, temporarily it put them into an even crazier place where they mixed the worst parts of Samurai attitude with the worst parts of Western imperialism and supremacy)

@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl Few things that Japan did during WWII were mad. The Rape of Nanking was justified (indeed it didn't go far enough) based on the past actions of the nation of China, and here again in the present they're proving the Japanese didn't go far enough.

It’s also a spiritual revelation for the character. He discovered a truth about the universe as he was dying. With his last breath the character continued to grow as a person.

Hans Zimmer is amazing, I've been a fan since the haunting score of The Thin Red Line

Can confirm. Watched the movie 3 times, cried every time. Crying right now after Critical mentioned the last scene for 5 seconds.

I have seen it long ago but just like Matrix I couldn't fully grasp the themes and implications as a dumb kid. I think I would like the movie if I were to watch it now.

You’re not alone.

Hope that guy already had kids cus he’s not having any more.

I looked it up. That's hilarious lol

He takes it so well, too. Instead of crying out, he just backs up into the ranks. Maybe they kept it in out of respect and admiration.

Realistically I'm sure cavalry forces throughout history had to deal with plenty of well-aimed horse kicks to the sisters. So I guess it adds to the realism lol

@@robwalsh9843 That's actually a fair point.

I love this line. I think about it often and try to remember this when things get tough.

Agreed, one of Hans Zimmer's best. Even the trailer music was good!

This is exactly what I came here to say

Hans Zimmer performed it love on this years tour. I got goosebumps hearing it.

Was looking for this! One of Zimmer’s greatests

When Algren was getting the tar beat out of him in the rain with the samurai watching. Gave me. Goosebumps upon goosebumps. That Japanese flute in the scene was masterful. With Taka being the only person to show emotion as he refused to stay down no matter how bad the beating, was for me one of finest ten minutes of film i have ever seen. But only because of the music. Wonderful score for the entire movie. But that one scene in particular, just wow!

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y8ilhLahm92zfZc.html

Same

It's neither. A lot of ppl like this movie. This was before the whole "cultural appropriation" garbage infected stupid ppl.

Yeah, the soundtrack gets overshadowed because of the amazing story, acting and sets. But I love the drum-heavy themes.

Peak Hans Zimmer. I feel like the score deserved an Oscar nod.

It’s why I started judging movies based off their soundtracks

this movie and kingdom of heaven Director's cut are two I always recommend for people looking for period pieces that are fictionalized history. Kingdom of Heaven was butchered on the cutting floor for the theatrical cut and the whole film is a masterpiece in my eyes

gotta love bob that rascal

The translator guy. Played wormtail in the Harry Potter movies.

@@ATSaale he was delightful... until he asked about 'scalping' .. then shitgot dark

Him and Bob.

@@adriansperling5012 right, he talks even less.. 😅 everyone in this movie is really good and its just a great movie in general One of the last of that kind :/ Everyone thinking this is a white saviour story is just lost, the white one got saved.

The nod he gives Nathan after checking his armor speaks volumes. It's such a huge undertaking to make us feel that someone like Ujio could come to respect someone like Nathan, but they do it believably.

@@adriansperling5012 bobs just angry because they make him wear a dress

@@adriansperling5012 Did you ask if you can call him Bob. I know he looks like a Bob lol.

It was a good death.

I heard that too but its baffling since there are almost no similarities and there were plenty of foreign trainers of the Japanese forces

@@bingobongo1615 he was not just a trainer but a combatant in this war kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i5ydarp90qe5lY0.html

@@bingobongo1615 "based on"... but vastly adapted !

@@FlatFab004 'based on' in the vein of Braveheart....

the story is also heavily influenced by the historic event known as the Satsuma rebellion, where traditional Samurai made a stand against the Western influenced imperial army

Not surprised, those 3 are for me the best of Kurosawa's films, the acting of Mifune in Throne of Blood is amazing. Impossible to not love those 3 films.

@@MrMagual82 Thoughts on Sanjuro?

He also did Glory with Denzel Washington.

Loved Blood Diamond. Very good movie.

Love seeing some appreciation for Blood Diamond! All time fave! Incredible soundtrack as well.

@@themonsterunderyourbed9408 The "baboon speech" was both funny and gave an insight into the psyche and capabilities of Leo's character.

Blood Diamond is a very Hollywoodized take on the setting. The massacre in the city serves as a mere background set piece for the escape of the two main characters rather than being the focus of the scene, which I thought was a bit poorly thought out.

Yeah but Algren knew what kind of man custer was, which was a flamboyant arrogant prick who's antics got all of his men needlessly killed. I'll bet he wished he'd taken his Gattling guns with him instead of leaving them behind.

Totally agree with your assessment. It’s much deeper than it gets credit for without being pretentious or deliberately obfuscatory (I’m looking at you The Lighthouse)

And I cry every time too. Especially when his son is killed

Very good assessment, it was the samurai who saved Tom Cruise's character, not the other way around.

Many western audiences hear the title and go "oh, a white dude is the last samurai?". But samurai is the plural of samurai; so I always interpreted the title as referring to the group that Cruise's character was captured by, they were the Last Samurai. Great movie. Very romanticized version of bushido to be sure, but that is what the movie is paying homage to, the ideal, not necessairly what it was actually like.

​@@erdrickcapet3945 That's an interesting take, I hadn't considered the plural of Samurai being Samurai. I thought it was because Tom Cruise eventually got made into one and he was the last one left on the battlefield, making him the last Samurai in the end - a sort of ironic tragedy that the only Samurai left in the end would be one of the foreigners who supplanted them. But yours makes total sense too and I'm wondering if maybe it was meant to be a dual meaning that's open to interpretation.

Of course a Japanese audience would be overawed by this, by any " Hollywood" film which glorifies Nippon I remember, when I worked there ( NOR as an English teacher; a serious job reorganising an acquired Japanese financial services company) the there were queues around the block to see that trash," Pearl HRbour". They will watch anything like that.

@@oweneather1435 thank you for letting the rest of us know you're better than us. It was very helpful to know the musings of a non-English teaching gaikokujin on the film.

Yes I belive the one put the guns on the samurai was Oda, latter Many lords start to use firearms and if you play total war shogun musket samurai beat anything

@@JAKEATO Guns were being used by Samurai decades before Oda Nobunaga

It's why it's hard to rewatch

Hollywood can't even cast these days

@@user-tm9ho3bm4v Right. Today, they'd have people from every race traipsing around 19th century Japan, and a gay subplot between Algren and Katsumoto.