I realize that this review comes quite a bit late, but I very rarely go to see a movie in the theatre... and generally strive to not pay a red cent toward a Holywood Movie, unless it is worth supporting (e.g. the Passion).
This movie had great action scenes, and was mostly enjoyable, but the self hating white liberal revisionist history was hard to overlook.
For one thing, we have the usually portrayal of all American soldiers during the period of the Indian Wars having personally participated in the massacre of women and children. One would think that the Indians only sat around singing "cum by ya" and tossing daisies in the way of settlers, and that white settlers just killed them all for the fun of it.
It is certainly true that there were massacres of Indians, but there were also massacres of whites by the Indians. However, it seems that now Indians can only be portrayed as peace-loving, noble, wise, and kind; and the whites who delt with them as only the opposite of those virtues.
But what is worse, in the case of this movie, is that now white America is blamed for the militarization of Japan.
It seems that the Japanese were also noble, wise, and kind... at least until they came into contact with the evil Europeans. But history shows that the Japanese were so brutal that even the Nazis were bothered by the level of their brutality. During the course of the Rape of Nanking, Nazis present in Nanking sought to put a stop to the rape and slaughter of civilians.
Aside from all that, the movie has almost no historical basis. And most certainly, the establishment in Japan was not trying to stamp out Bushido (the way of the Samurai).
Furthermore, the Last Samurai repeatedly ripped-off Braveheart... to such an extent that I was expecting during the final battle scene that at some point Tom Cruise was going to shout:
They can take away our lives, but they can never take away our Bushido!
But Braveheart at least was based on real history.
One get's a better sense of Japanese history from watching Samurai Jack...
But the fight scenes were good though.
