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The Last Samurai

Nathan Algren, a US army veteran, is hired by the Japanese emperor to train his army in the modern warfare techniques. Nathan finds himself trapped in a struggle between two eras and two worlds.
In the 1870s, Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a cynical veteran of the American Civil War, who will work for anyone, is hired by Americans who want lucrative contracts with the Emperor of Japan to train the peasant conscripts for the first standing Imperial Army in modern warfare using firearms. The Imperial Omura (Masato Harada) cabinet's first priority is to repress a rebellion of traditionalist Samurai, hereditary warriors, who remain devoted to the sacred dynasty, but reject the Westernizing policy, and even refuse firearms. Yet, when his ill-prepared superior force sets out too soon, their panic allows the sword-wielding samurai to crush them. Badly wounded, Algren's courageous stand makes the samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) spare his life. Once nursed to health, he learns to know and respect the old Japanese way, and participates as advisor in Katsumoto's failed attempt to save the Bushido tradition, but Omura gets repressive laws enacted. He must now choose to honor his loyalty to one of the embittered sides when the conflict returns to the battlefield. — KGF Vissers
In 1876--while still haunted by the massacres against the American-Indian tribes--the former Civil War veteran and now an embittered alcoholic, Captain Nathan Algren, is presented with an offer to train the inexperienced army of the Japanese emperor. However, when the untried Imperial soldiers are sent too early into battle against the seasoned men of the samurai leader, Katsumoto, Algren will find himself captured as a prisoner of war. Intent on knowing his enemy, Katsumoto spares Algren's life, only to see him, little by little, embrace Bushido: the dying code of the samurai. Now, Nathan faces an entirely new enemy. Will the last samurai find peace in his quest for redemption? — Nick Riganas
Set in Japan during the 1870s, this movie tells the story of Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first Army in the art of modern warfare. The Imperial Omura (Masato Harada) cabinet attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation for more Westernized and trade-friendly government policies, Algren finds himself unexpectedly impressed and influenced by his encounters with the Samurai, which places him at the center of a struggle between two eras and two worlds, with only his own sense of honor to guide him. — la pointe
Former U.S. Army Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a bitter alcoholic traumatized by the atrocities he committed during the American Indian Wars, is approached by his former commanding officer Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn) to train the newly created Imperial Japanese Army for a forward-thinking Japanese businessman Omura (Masato Harada) (an industrialist and pro-reform politician who dislikes the old samurai and shogun-related lifestyle. He quickly imports westernization and modernization while making money for himself through his railroads. Coming from a merchant family that was like many repressed during the days of Samurai rule and the cause for his extreme dislike for their nobility, he assumes a great deal of power during the Meiji Restoration and takes advantages of Meiji's youth to become his chief advisor (wielding power similar to those of the Shoguns)), who intends to use the army to suppress a Samurai-headed rebellion against Japan's new emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura) (Credited with the implementation of the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the Emperor is eager to import Western ideas and practices to modernize and empower Japan to become a strong nation). Despite his hatred of Bagley (Algren dislikes Bagley for his role in the Washita River massacre of the Native Americans that Algren cannot get over) for his role in the Indian Wars, an impoverished Algren takes the job for the money, and is accompanied to Japan by his old friend, Sergeant Zebulon Gant. Upon arriving, Algren meets Simon Graham (Timothy Spall), a British translator knowledgeable about the samurai. Algren finds the Imperial soldiers are actually conscripted peasants that have no knowledge of firearms or battle. Early in their training, Algren is informed that the samurai are attacking one of Omura's railroads; Omura sends the army there, despite Algren's protests that they are not ready. The battle is a disaster; the undisciplined conscripts are routed, and Gant is killed. Algren fights to the last before he is surrounded; expecting to die, he is taken prisoner when samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) (a warrior-poet who was once Emperor Meiji's most trusted teacher. He is displeased with Mr. Omura's bureaucratic reform policies which leads him into organizing a revolt against the Imperial Army) decides to spare him. Algren is taken to Katsumoto's village to live among his family. While he is poorly treated at first, he eventually gains the samurai's respect and actually becomes friends with Katsumoto. Algren overcomes his alcoholism and guilt and learns the Japanese language and culture. He develops sympathy for the samurai, who are upset that the pace of modern technology has eroded the traditions of their society. Algren and Taka (Koyuki Kato), Katsumoto's sister and the widow of a samurai killed by Algren, develop an unspoken affection for each other. One night, a group of ninjas infiltrate the village and attempt to assassinate Katsumoto. Algren saves Katsumoto's life, and then helps defend the village. Katsumoto requests a meeting with Emperor Meiji and is given safe passage to Tokyo. He brings Algren, intending to release him. Upon arriving in Tokyo, Algren finds the Imperial Army is now a well-trained and fully equipped fighting force. Katsumoto, to his dismay, discovers that the young and inexperienced Emperor has essentially become a puppet of Omura. At a government meeting, Omura orders Katsumoto's arrest for carrying a sword in public and asks him to perform Seppuku to redeem his honor. Algren refuses Omura's offer to lead the new army to crush the rebels, due to his sympathy. Omura sends assassins to kill Algren, but Algren kills them. Algren assists the samurai in freeing Katsumoto; in the process, Katsumoto's son Nobutada (Shin Koyamada) (Katsumoto's son who is lord of the village in which the Samurai are encamped. Nobutada befriends Algren. Katsumoto, the samurai lord, advises Nobutada to teach Algren in the Japanese way - Japanese culture and Japanese language) is mortally wounded, sacrificing himself to allow the others to escape. As the Imperial Army marches to crush the rebellion, a grieving Katsumoto contemplates Seppuku, but Algren convinces him to fight until the end, and joins the samurai in battle. The samurai use the Imperial Army's overconfidence to lure them into a trap and deprive them of artillery support. The ensuing battle inflicts massive casualties on both sides and forces the Imperial soldiers to retreat. Knowing that Imperial reinforcements are coming, and defeat is inevitable, Katsumoto orders a suicidal cavalry charge on horseback. During the charge, the samurai break through Bagley's line. Bagley is killed by Algren, but the samurai are quickly mowed down by Gatling guns. The Imperial captain, previously trained by Algren and horrified by the sight of the dying samurai, orders all of the guns to cease fire, disregarding Omura's orders. A mortally wounded Katsumoto commits Seppuku with Algren's help as the soldiers at the scene kneel in respect. Days later, as trade negotiations conclude, Algren, though injured, arrives and interrupts the proceedings. He presents the Emperor with Katsumoto's sword and asks him to remember the traditions for which Katsumoto and his fellow Samurai died. The Emperor realizes that while Japan should modernize, it cannot forget its own culture and history; he promptly rejects the trade offer. When Omura attempts to protest, the Emperor silences him by threatening to seize the Omura family assets and distribute them among the populace. While various rumors regarding Algren's fate circulate, Graham concludes that Algren had returned to the village to reunite with Taka.

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The Last Samurai

Where to watch.

Rent The Last Samurai on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

With high production values and thrilling battle scenes, The Last Samurai is a satisfying epic.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Edward Zwick

Capt. Nathan Algren

Ken Watanabe

Timothy Spall

Simon Graham

Billy Connolly

Zebulon Gant

Tony Goldwyn

Col. Bagley

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Edward Zwick 's "The Last Samurai" is about two warriors whose cultures make them aliens, but whose values make them comrades. The battle scenes are stirring and elegantly mounted, but they are less about who wins than about what can be proven by dying. Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic. Its power is compromised only by an ending that sheepishly backs away from what the film is really about.

Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe co-star, as a shabby Civil War veteran and a proud samurai warrior. Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a war hero who now drifts and drinks too much, with no purpose in life. He's hired by Americans who are supplying mercenaries to train an army for the Japanese emperor, who wants to move his country into the modern world and is faced with a samurai rebellion.

The role of the samurai leader Katsumoto (Watanabe) is complex; he is fighting against the emperor's men, but out of loyalty to the tradition the emperor represents, he would sacrifice his life in an instant, he says, if the emperor requested it. But Japan has been seized with a fever to shake off its medieval ways and copy the West, and the West sees money to be made in the transition: Representatives from the Remington arms company are filling big contracts for weapons, and the U.S. Embassy is a clearinghouse for lucrative trade arrangements.

Into this cauldron Algren descends as a cynic. He is told the samurai are "savages with bows and arrows," but sees that the American advisers have done a poor job of training the modernized Japanese army to fight them. Leading his untried troops into battle, he is captured and faces death -- but is spared by a word from Katsumoto, who returns him as a prisoner to the village of his son.

It's at this point that "The Last Samurai" begins to reveal itself as more than an action picture. Katsumoto, who conveniently speaks English, explains he has kept Algren alive because he wants to know his enemy. Algren at first refuses to speak, but gradually, during a long, rainy winter of captivity, he begins to have philosophical conversations with the other man about the ethics of war and warriors. Some of these talks sound like Socratic exchanges:

Katsumoto: "Do you believe a man can change his destiny?"

Algren: "I believe a man does what he can until his destiny is revealed."

For Algren, the traditional village life is a soothing tonic. Haunted by nightmares from his wartime experiences, he confesses, "Here I have known my first untroubled sleep in many years." He has been lodged in the house of Taka (Koyuki), the widow of a man he killed in battle, and although she complains bitterly to Katsumoto, she maintains a smiling facade in Algren's presence.

Algren: "I killed her husband!"

Katsumoto: "It was a good death."

Katsumoto has pledged his life to defending the dying code of the samurai. Algren finds himself gradually shifting allegiances, away from the mercenaries and toward the samurai, but his shift is visceral, not ideological. He bonds with Katsumoto, respects him, wants to find respect in his eyes. The movie illustrates the universal military truth that men in battle are motivated not by their cause but by loyalty to their comrades.

"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.

Watanabe is a deep, powerful presence; he has the potential to become the first world star from Japan since Toshiro Mifune . Cruise is already a star, and will be targeted by those predisposed to see him and not his character, but here I think his stardom works for the film, because he takes with him into battle both the cocksure pilot of " Top Gun " and the war-weary veteran of " Born on the Fourth of July ." The casting helps the film with its buried message, which is about the re-education of a conventional American soldier.

The supporting cast is splendid: Koyuki quietly stirs as the widow who feels sexual attraction but suppresses it; Tony Goldwyn blusters and threatens as the hard American mercenary; Timothy Spall is the British translator who knows the words but not the music. Scichinosuke Nakamura plays the emperor as a tormented, shy man who admires Katsumoto's values, even while agreeing with his advisers that the rebellion must be put down. "I am a living god -- as long as I do what they say is right," he muses at one point, in words I somehow doubt any Japanese emperor would ever have employed.

The director is Edward Zwick, whose other war films (" Glory ," "Legends of the Fall," " Courage Under Fire ") have also dealt with men whose personal loyalties have figured more importantly than political ideology. Here he gives Algren a speech attacking Custer, whose last stand was fresh in everyone's mind. ("He was a murderer who fell in love with his own legend, and his troops died for it.") Yes, but how would Algren describe this film's final battle scene, in which Katsumoto leads his men into what appears to be certain death? To be sure, his men share his values, but is there an element of seeking "a good death"? Is a there a line between dying for what you believe in, and dying because of what you believe in?

That the film raises this question shows how thoughtful it is. If "The Last Samurai" had ended in a way that was consistent with its tone and direction, it would have been true to its real feelings. But the ending caves in to Hollywood requirements, and we feel the air going out of the picture. An art film can trust its audience to follow along to the necessary conclusion. A Hollywood ending assumes that the audience caves in at the end, turns dim-witted and sentimental, and must be fed its lollypop.

"The Last Samurai" has greatness in it, but sidesteps the ending that would have given it real impact. If there's going to be an alternative ending on the DVD, I know what it would have to show -- and so, I suspect, does Edward Zwick.

Note: Which character is the "last samurai" -- Katsumoto, or Algren? A case can be made for either answer, which suggests the nature of their relationship.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Last Samurai (2003)

Rated R for strong violence and battle sequences

154 minutes

Timothy Spall as Simon Graham

Tom Cruise as Nathan Algren

Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto

Tony Goldwyn as Col. Benjamin Bagly

Koyuki as Taka

Hiroyuki Sanada as Ujio

Billy Connolly as Sgt. Zebulah Grant

Shin Koyamada as Nobutada

Scichinosuke Nakamura as Emperor

Aoi Minata as Magojiro

Marshall Herskovitz

Directed by

Edward Zwick

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The True Story Behind 'The Last Samurai'

Tom Cruise plays an American fighting alongside the Samurai. But how much of this story is based on real history?

The Big Picture

The Last Samurai is a fictionalized account of Japan's past, blending entertainment with historical events.
The film follows an American military officer who embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy.
While loosely based on real characters and events, the movie takes creative liberties and isn't entirely historically accurate.

When you see a movie poster that says the film is "based on a true story," it's fairly understood that there are going to be at least some Hollywood changes made, rendering the film less than 100% historically accurate. However, before it was easy to research on the internet what was fact from fiction, it was tough to know whether you were watching an accurate history lesson or a blend of Hollywood and an encyclopedia. One film that left many moviegoers wondering was 2003's The Last Samurai . Although this movie was constructed to resemble a first-hand account of Japan's past, the truth was that plenty of it was created for entertainment purposes . This leads to the question of what was the real story behind The Last Samurai.

The Last Samurai

An American military advisor embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy after he is captured in battle.

What Happens in 'The Last Samurai'?

The depiction of the Samurai is nothing new in TV and film. This Edward Zwick -directed movie starred Tom Cruise as an American military officer who was hired by the Japanese government to train their army to combat the rising rebellion led by a group of outcast Samurai warriors . These warriors fought to resist Japan's rapidly growing modernization, which had been influenced by Western cultures. Cruise's character, Captain Nathan Algren, is there for a paycheck with no allegiance to the Japanese government whatsoever. In fact, Algren is facing his own demons with his involvement in the American-Indian wars.

The leader of the Samurai warriors is Katsumoto ( Ken Watanabe ), a compassionate yet deadly swordsman who heads the rebellion. In the first battle between the Algren-led Japanese forces and the Samurai, the American leader defeats a prominent warrior, resulting in him avoiding execution when captured. However, during his time with the Samurai, Algren learns to not only respect and understand the reasons for this rebellion but also how to fight like a Japanese warrior. Eventually, he joins the rebels to fight alongside them against the Imperial army. All of this makes for a highly entertaining film, yet it only somewhat borrows from the actual events that occurred during that time period.

The Samurai Helped Unify Japan

History, as well as many old and new Samurai productions, like FX's Shōgun , has taught us that the Samurai were highly skilled warriors from Japan , emerging during the Heian period, which fell between the years of 794 to 1185 AD. Following a strict code of conduct and ethics called Bushido , the leading warrior faction at the time focused on loyalty, self-discipline, and especially honor. Contrary to what many might believe, the Samurai were not only swordsmen but also served as protectors and guards, possessing many other skills such as archery and horse riding. There is no doubt that the Samurai were a force to be reckoned with.

By the mid-1300s, the Samurai had become a well-established military elite culture separate from the commoners. They grew so powerful that they began to obtain political influence during Japan's period of government instability. Somewhere between 1400 and 1600, known as the Sengoku period , the Samurai reached the peak of their political and physical strength, possessing significant influence over the country. Their will and discipline helped unify Japan and brought stability to the nation.

Where Was 'Shōgun' Filmed?

With this new stability, the Samurai became more involved in government and civil issues as battles became less frequent. The combination of politicians and Samurai brought about a period of more cultural and intellectual pursuits. However, in the late 19th century, Japan underwent rapid modernization under the influence of Western powers . Intensely focused on preserving their culture and heritage, The Samurai rejected this expansion and change, resulting in them becoming outcasts of rebellion and ultimately leading to the Boshin War. This type of conflict is nothing new, as there have been plenty of Japanese stories depicting wars and battles .

Tom Cruise’s Character in 'The Last Samurai' Is Based on Jules Brunet

It's important to point out that the story of The Last Samurai was mostly fictionalized, and, although they did play a part in Western influence accessing Japan and what led to this story, America played little part in this chapter. While Tom Cruise's character, Captain Nathan Algren, is based on a real person named Jules Brunet , he was a member of the French military that came over to Japan during the Boshin War . The Boshin War was a clash between the Japanese government and the Samurai rebellion in response to the West's influence on modernizing Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate, who'd previously held a centuries-long grip on Japanese rule, needed assistance in combating the Meiji Emperor. Having a positive relationship with the French and Napolean III , the Shogunate reached out to their allies, leading them to acquire Brunet, a highly decorated artillery expert, to help arm and advise their military.

Much like other characters featured in other Samurai films, there are often as many untruths as there are facts. For example, true is the fact that Brunet developed sympathy for the Samurai’s cause and eventually sided with them to fight against the imperial Japanese forces. However, despite the epic conclusion of the film’s last stand, the alignment of the fates of Algren and Brunet is hit-and-miss. Brunet fought alongside the Samurai through the Battle of Hakodate, where the Samurai, led by Saigao Takamori, made their last stand, but he fled back to France with some comrades following their defeat . The Japanese Empire, having re-established their power, sought to have him pay for opposing them. Still, Brunet was protected by the French government and put back in their military, where he continued his tenure through the Franco-Prussian War and the French Commune of 1871.

Ken Watanabe’s ’The Last Samurai’s Character Is Based on a True Samurai Leader

As for the leader of the Samurai rebellion, Ken Watanabe portrayed the character Mortisugu Katsumoto, who held a significant role in both the movie and history. Similarly to Algren, this character was also loosely based on a real Samurai warrior. Katsumoto can be directly linked to the iconic Japanese Samurai Saigō Takamori . Takamori strongly opposed and resisted the Japanese government's sudden transition from traditional culture and feudalism to Western-like modernization. His vocal opposition was a major wedge between the traditional faction and the Meiji government. Like the film's character, Takamori wouldn't budge from his commitment to traditional Samurai culture, values, and an intense sense of honor. He and the rest of the rebels believed that preserving Japan's traditional culture was paramount , even over the growing influence of Western powers on the country's government.

Katsumodo's eventual demise at the end of The Last Samurai was that of a leader fighting to a dramatic death to defend his people and his beliefs. However, in reality, Takamori's death took place long after the events the film depicts. Following the Battle of Hakodate, Takamori joined the Meiji government, where he rose to lead their military as a general by 1873 . This wouldn't last as he'd retire in protest of the Meiji government . According to Mark Ravina's work in his book "The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori," Saigo returned to his hometown of Kagoshima and opened schools called Shi-Gakko, where he trained former Samurai. After leaving his position, the political pressure dissolving the Samurai class continued, causing a desire to rebel among his students. As a result of the mounting pressure and actions taken by the Meiji, Saigo was forced to declare war, taking 15,000 soldiers into a final stand during 1877's Satsuma Rebellion. Although the specifics of his death aren't clear, by the end of this brutal battle , Saigo was critically wounded and committed Seppukku .

While Not Completely Accurate, ‘ The Last Samurai ’ Has Historical Merit

When comparing the real-life main characters of The Last Samurai to actual history, it's also interesting to examine the reality of the Japanese conflict itself. The Meiji Restoration , which occurred from roughly 1868 to 1912, marked the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the rise of imperial control under Emperor Meiji. The government, previously connected with the Samurai and their traditional values, was replaced by military rule focused on modernization. With increasing Western influence in the Meiji Empire , the Samurai felt they had no choice but to separate and form a rebellion to reclaim their rapidly changing countr y. In contrast to what The Last Samurai portrayed, the clash between the government and the rebels lasted longer than a few uneven battles.

Despite the efforts of the Samurai, they were eventually defeated by the Meiji Imperial forces , and the focus on modernization and industrial progress continued to shape Japan's government. The real Samurai rebellion was much more complex than what The Last Samurai depicts. The rebels were not just warriors who broke away from the Japanese imperial government; they were also advocates for preserving the country's centuries-old values and culture. Focusing back on the film, The Last Samurai has faced criticism due to it being racially insensitive and a historically inaccurate film . However, Watanabe, himself, has come out in defense of it , saying "I just thought we had the opportunity to depict Japan in a way that we were never able to before. So we thought we were making something special." Regardless of the side one argues, it's unfortunate that the movie doesn't make much light of the history it's based on and instead casts Cruise as its Great White hero.

The Last Samurai is currently available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

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Was The Last Samurai Tom Cruise’s last great movie?

Twenty years ago, the ‘mission: impossible’ frontman did a lot more than just shoot people and jump off tall buildings. today, ‘the last samurai’ marks one of the actor’s final truly ambitious starring roles. as the film celebrates its 20th birthday, chris edwards speaks to director edward zwick about its place in cruise’s legacy and the stunt that nearly killed his leading man, article bookmarked.

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Samurai man: Tom Cruise in his 2003 historical epic ‘The Last Samurai’

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A sk Steven Spielberg who his favourite superhero is and he’ll probably say Tom Cruise . Last year, the filmmaker credited the actor for “saving Hollywood’s ass” with Top Gun: Maverick , thanks to its sky-high box office numbers on the back of the pandemic . That Cruise should be the literal saviour of cinema seems fitting, given that he’s now the undisputed king of action blockbusters . And yet, for all his recent efforts and cinema-saving success, he doesn’t have a major personal award to show for it. In fact, it’s been years since the actor gave a genuinely Oscar-worthy performance. Twenty of them, to be exact.

December 2003 saw the release of director Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai , a sweeping epic charting the end of Meiji-era Japan and the extinction of a noble band of warriors. Teeming with peaceful temples, opulent courtrooms and pensive shots of luscious nature (although it was mostly filmed in New Zealand, not Japan), the film didn’t exactly feel like your typical Cruise blockbuster from the offset. But it ended up becoming the perfect vehicle to showcase both his acting ability and superhuman work ethic.

“Tom’s energy was daunting and inspiring,” Zwick says today, speaking from his home in California. “We shot for 120 days on three continents. He was in practically every scene and never did I see even the slightest flagging of enthusiasm or a lowering of the high bar he sets for himself. That kind of attitude from the number one on the call sheet is incalculable. It animates everyone, cast and crew alike, and creates an on-set culture that carries the film through some very long, tough days and nights.”

In the film, Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a former US Army captain who is hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country’s first army in the ways of westernised combat (aka guns), to quash an uprising from the last remaining samurai. However, after being captured in battle by the samurai and forced to live in their peaceful mountain village, Algren becomes accustomed to their way of life. He then decides to join their rebellion, after realising that the imperialists are the real enemy after all.

The Last Samurai was nominated for four Oscars at the February 2004 ceremony – Best Supporting Actor (Ken Watanabe), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound Mixing – but went home empty-handed. Cruise, who also produced, didn’t even get a sniff, which is perhaps unsurprising given he was playing a fairly generic hero role. But it was still a thoughtful and nuanced performance, the sort not typically required for blockbusters like Mission: Impossible, Edge of Tomorrow , or any and all aviation-based films featuring sweaty, shirtless ball-tossing.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to make an epic,” Cruise said during the film’s press tour back in 2003, after being asked why he decided to take on the project. He also cited his pre-existing fascination with the samurai and their culture. “That’s how I aspire to live my life, with integrity, compassion, honour, loyalty. Those are things I think about and that mean something to me. But in making the picture, I got to really get inside a different culture, one I’m absolutely fascinated by.”

It was essentially a passion project for Cruise, who hasn’t made a film like it since. He did deliver a surprising turn as an assassin in Michael Mann’s sinister 2004 thriller Collateral – arguably his last vaguely interesting role – but it certainly wasn’t the kind of part that could define a career like The Last Samurai looked set to do.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s just hard for an actor to give a dimensional, complex performance when he’s playing a comic book hero

Though decidedly in blockbuster mode, Cruise’s performance in the film perfectly captures the conflict in Algren, a man who previously fought against the Native Americans and subsequently drinks to erase the memory of his atrocities. As he begins to fall in love with the samurai way of life – as well as the widow of a man he honourably killed with a stick in combat – he gains an even deeper understanding of the suffering his own people have inflicted. By the time he’s had some thoroughly enjoyable conversations with chief warrior Katsumoto (Watanabe), and suits up in objectively cool samurai armour, you don’t just understand why he wants to switch sides, you want to join him.

Zwick was impressed by Cruise’s acting skills, but he mentions one particular moment during filming that left a lasting impression. “There’s an important scene toward the end of the film on the eve of the samurai’s final battle,” the director tells me . “He was to say goodbye to Higen, the son of the man he killed, whom he befriended over the course of his stay in the village. I felt that shooting at magic hour would lend a sombre tone. That meant having only one take of a very emotional moment – with multiple cameras – in Japanese! It’s one of his finest moments in the movie. I’m sure had I asked him to do it while standing on his head, he would have done that, too.”

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Over the course of the film, Cruise learned to speak Japanese, mastered their style of swordsmanship (kenjutsu), and, of course, performed all of his own stunts. As ever, his commitment to the role and project as a whole was immense.

As for the actor’s creative input, Zwick adds: “He understands a director’s issues as well as his own and knows how to articulate those aspects of his character that might be worthy of examination. What made it easy was that his thoughts were always in the context of the movie as a whole, rather than the kind of tunnel vision some actors indulge in.”

Cruise even put his neck on the line for the film. Literally. While shooting a battle scene, in which he and co-star Hiroyuki Sanada were meant to ride towards each other on animatronic horses, a malfunction caused them to almost collide and Sanada came within an inch of decapitating the lead star with his sword. “Tom’s neck was right in front of me and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand,” Sanada told reporters through a translator while promoting the film in Taipei, Taiwan. “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

It’s widely acknowledged that the Academy Awards like actors to suffer in order to win an Oscar – crawling into the carcass of a frozen horse for The Revenant finally did the trick for Leonardo DiCaprio, after all – and what could typify that more than almost losing your head?

Aside from an apparent bias against blockbusters, there’s another likely reason why Cruise didn’t receive an Oscar nod for The Last Samurai : when the film was first released, it immediately prompted questions about its depiction of Japanese culture. It was accused of historical inaccuracies and the story was deemed by some to be a prime example of white saviourism.

But the criticism wasn’t completely justified. Cruise’s character is actually based on a real person: a French soldier named Jules Brunet, who arrived in Japan in 1867 to train the Tokugawa shogunate in modern weapons and tactics. Even Watanabe’s chief warrior is steeped in a real piece of history, with the character largely inspired by Saigo Takamori, the leader of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion.

In any case, The Last Samurai does not purport to be a biopic, and is clearly meant to be watched as a piece of fiction. In 2004, Zwick told The Independent that he intended to romanticise the samurai, who were nowhere near as friendly in real life. “It was an aristocratic culture that existed on the backs of the peasants,” the director said. “It was sometimes quite brutal and there were real licenses that I took, fully aware of what I was giving in exchange for what I was getting.”

In truth, Zwick ensured that the samurai were the real stars of the film, which is a genuine rarity for a blockbuster fronted by someone basically as famous as God. Instead of fixating on star power, action or special effects, The Last Samurai focused on character development, allowing Cruise to tap back into the Oscar-worthy skillset that previously earned him acting nominations for Rain Man , Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia .

And it turned out to be a master stroke. Critically, the film received mostly positive reviews, with Roger Ebert writing that it is “beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, [and] an uncommonly thoughtful epic”. The Hollywood Reporter , meanwhile, heavily praised Cruise for “underplaying his role, letting his character’s deeds speak for him and permitting intimacies not usually associated with epic moviemaking.” Financially, however, the film actually performed better in Japan than it did in the US, which could perhaps be a reason why we haven’t seen a similar Cruise epic since.

Understandably, Zwick bemoans the box office demands of modern blockbusters and how, as a result, it’s become harder for actors to deliver the sort of thoughtful performances that can really elevate a story. “I know there are lots of reasons, mostly economic, that the major studios are reluctant to take chances on the kind of adult, dramatic films – at scale – that I’ve been lucky enough to make,” he says. ”It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s just hard for an actor to give a dimensional, complex performance when he’s playing a comic book hero. [In those films] the star of the movie is the special effects.”

Mercifully, Cruise is yet to delve into a superhero universe, but it’s possible that the demands of major studios and audiences may well prevent him from dropping another acting masterclass in a mainstream blockbuster – unless he ends up surprising us when he finally leaves Earth’s orbit for that untitled SpaceX film. Yes, Cruise may be the saviour of cinema (and Spielberg’s hero), but to become it, he’s had to take a 20-year break from true protagonist perfection.

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The Last Samurai (2003) Stream and Watch Online

Looking to watch ' The Last Samurai ' in the comfort of your own home? Hunting down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the Edward Zwick-directed movie via subscription can be difficult, so we here at Moviefone want to do right by you. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'The Last Samurai' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the various whats and wheres of how you can watch 'The Last Samurai' right now, here are some specifics about the Warner Bros. Pictures, Radar Pictures, Bedford Falls Productions, Cruise/Wagner Productions war flick. Released December 1st, 2003, 'The Last Samurai' stars Tom Cruise , Ken Watanabe , Timothy Spall , Tony Goldwyn The R movie has a runtime of about 2 hr 34 min, and received a user score of 76 (out of 100) on TMDb, which compiled reviews from 6,569 knowledgeable users. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist." 'The Last Samurai' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Apple iTunes, AMC on Demand, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand, Vudu, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, and YouTube .

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

Is a romance really necessary, no matter how ridiculous, just to prove the two male leads aren't in love with each other?

The Last Samurai delivers one of the stronger historical adventure epics of recent years.

Zwick's film idealizes the "noble savage" and denigrates modern society not from the point of view of a serious critique of capitalism, but in a misanthropic, right-wing populist manner.

The breathtaking showpiece skirmishes might well suggest a Braveheart set in Japan, but there is something more going on here than merely rolling out the battles.

Mostly, though, The Last Samurai aims for, and achieves, epic sweep: the glory of tradition-bound warriors hurling themselves against the modern world, the grandeur of Hollywood offering two points of view on everything.

does honor traditional Japanese culture and ideals and make them accessible to a wider audience

Outstanding action and performance; lots of blood.

One of the best films of 2003.

More than anything else, "The Last Samurai" is the current Tom Cruise vehicle, and the actor's capacity to wrestle the story to his own demands is an impressive testament to his multifaceted perfectionist skills.

It's easy to stand back and wax ironic about The Last Samurai. But it's not all that difficult to succumb to its full-spirited romanticism either.

Additional Info

Genre : Action, Drama
Release Date : December 5, 2003
Languages : English
Captions : English
Audio Format : 5.1

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Tom Cruise’s Historical War Epic Remains Controversial — and Underrated

The Last Samurai may be a product of its time, but it was also a step forward for representation.

Discussions of The Last Samurai often focus on the obvious incongruity of a movie where Tom Cruise dons samurai armor to become the steward of traditional Japanese culture. The picture of Cruise’s bearded, American-Jesus-like face, writ large on a movie poster under the word “samurai,” was more a symbol of Hollywood tradition when the film appeared in theaters on December 5, 2003. Yes, this is a white-savior narrative — Cruise’s cosplaying can’t disguise it — but the first face onscreen is Ken Watanabe, who received an Oscar nomination for his role as Katsumoto, the samurai leader. What the actors represent offscreen, culturally, is the reciprocal of their characters and the film’s central conflict between tradition and modernization.

The Last Samurai follows Cruise’s character, Captain Nathan Algren, a guilt-ridden, mercenary veteran of the American Indian Wars who enters Japan to train the Emperor’s army so they can quell a samurai revolt. Set early in the Meiji era, when Japan opened to the West after 200-plus years of isolationism, the film pits Katsumoto and the country’s old, sword-wielding, feudal ways against new American technologies like the Winchester rifle and the dreaded howitzer. That these are weapons is almost incidental to the plot; the old and new are vying for dominion.

In the opening scene, Katsumoto realizes something’s amiss when his idyllic mountain meditation is interrupted by a vision of a white tiger. This is a premonition of Algren, who inhabits a more industrial milieu when we meet him at a San Francisco trade show. There, “railroads, cannons, and Western clothing,” as Emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura) later puts it, are ready to be exported to Japan. Trotted onstage with brass fanfare as a sham war hero, Algren raises his rifle in a drunken stupor and tells the audience, “My thanks on behalf of those who died in the name of better mechanical amusements and commercial opportunities.”

These words, a eulogy for the innocent Cheyenne village he helped massacre, could apply equally to Katsumoto’s samurai generation as it rides in through the mists of time, clashing with contemporary, mechanized forces on the battlefield in Japan. Even before that, Timothy Spall’s British narrator notes how “the ancient and the modern are at war” for the country’s soul.

In telling the story of Japan’s Westernization (really, its Americanization, transposed from post-World War II in a turn-of-the-millennium historical epic), director Edward Zwick relies on cinematic convention. He even repeats a scene from his own Civil War movie, Glory , where the commanding officer in dark blue deliberately rattles the non-white soldier-in-training to prove he’s not ready to hit a target under pressure. At the same time, the Japanese actors who surround Cruise in prominent roles show they’re more than capable of holding their own against the international movie star.

The Last Samurai Tom Cruise Ken Watanabe

Cruise may be the headliner, but Watanabe is the movie’s soul.

Hiroyuki Sanada plays Katusmoto’s second-in-command, Ujio, and like Watanabe, he’s another actor who’s remained in the limelight (though perhaps not enough so ) 20 years after The Last Samurai . By introducing global audiences to such talents, the film arguably did more to move the needle, representation-wise, than other 2003 releases like Lost in Translation and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (both set in Japan, but with fewer top-billed Japanese names).

In this way, The Last Samurai managed to plant one foot in the future despite being stuck in the Eurocentric past, with Zwick and co-screenwriters John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz framing the narrative. Even Algren’s love interest, Taka (the mononymous Koyuki, fresh off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse ), isn’t thrilled about playing house with the unwashed foreigner who killed her husband.

In the third act, Cruise predictably wears his plot armor as the movie goes full Braveheart (with the same cinematographer, John Toll). These internal tensions somewhat reflect the story’s underlying concern with the double-edged sword of progress. If nothing else, The Last Samurai was, as Watanabe alluded in The Guardian last year, a crossroads away from the kind of offensive yellowface caricatures seen in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“Before The Last Samurai ,” Watanabe said, “there was this stereotype of Asian people with glasses, bucked teeth and a camera. It was stupid, but after [ The Last Samurai ] came out, Hollywood tried to be more authentic when it came to Asian stories.”

While not above reproach, The Last Samurai was a landmark in more authentic Hollywood representation.

The film is loosely based on real Japanese history, with Katsumoto standing in for Saigo Takamori (1828–1877), who led the Satsuma Rebellion and has been called the “last true samurai.” Starting the action in 1876 aligns it with America’s centennial as it reconfigures around Algren, who’s only out for capitalist gain until he sees the beauty of the cultural paradigm he’s worked to obliterate. That’s what The Last Samurai is really about, but it’s easy to lose sight of its broader theme when the movie is so very specific about the story it’s telling (and who’s telling it).

Katsumoto mourns the loss of traditions, something Cruise and other real-life proponents of the theatrical experience might find relatable now more than ever. These days, The Last Samurai’s widescreen visuals are relegated to your typical streaming service, Paramount+. Before it landed there, the film’s supporting cast helped prime the Academy Awards for homegrown Asian films like Parasite and Japan’s own Drive My Car . Nothing can stop progress.

Den of Geek

Shogun Fixes The Last Samurai’s Greatest Weakness

The Last Samurai and Shogun act as strange companion pieces about the West’s relationship with feudal Japan, but one does it a lot better.

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This article contains mild spoilers for Shōgun and major ones for The Last Samurai.

A lonely Westerner who seems lost before he even steps off his ship; a strange land filled with ritualized grace and deadly niceties; and a culture shock that is both intoxicating and intimidating—even before our stranger sees the samurai masks and katana blades come out. This could very well be a description of the odyssey which English seaman John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) finds himself on in FX’s astonishing new limited series, Shōgun . Yet I’m actually describing a popular Tom Cruise vehicle loosely set in the same aesthetic: The Last Samurai .

Released in December 2003 to positive reviews and impressive box office (back when adult-skewing dramas could regularly net $454 million at the world box office), director Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai was applauded in its time for its pensive soulfulness and kinetic action sequences. It also, of course, was embraced because it featured one of the most popular movie stars on the planet in an exotic locale and even more exoticized attire. For while a charitable reading of the movie’s title is to suggest it’s about the truly great performance of the film— Ken Watanabe as a rogue samurai attempting to thwart the Westernization of his homeland—it is still Cruise in crimson red armor beneath “The Last Samurai” lettering on the poster.

The Last Samurai is, indeed, a thoughtful, excellently crafted, and superbly made variation on a particular trope of cinema we now typically call the “white savior movie,” although it’s debatable who, if anyone, is saved in The Last Samurai . But however you slice it, the film sits comfortably alongside Dances with Wolves , Avatar , and other stories about a white man losing himself to a “native” culture that he comes to idealize and lead.

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Which is what makes revisiting the otherwise entertaining The Last Samurai in the wake of Shōgun ’s popularity such a curious contrast. The new TV series is itself adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel of the same (and which was previously adapted for the small screen in a 1980 miniseries). And by virtue of its premise where we’re introduced to the customs of feudal Japan through a Western lens—Clavell was himself a British citizen who wound up in a Japanese POW camp in World War II— Shōgun could have played out much the same way: as a tale of Western apprehension and awe at the Bushidō morality code. And yet, the 21st century TV series that has come out of Clavell’s more archetypal text has proven so much richer and more complex. In the new series, Blackthorne is not our natural protagonist but rather a sympathetic piece of a far greater ensemble. That canny transition of perspectives hints at Shōgun ’s larger grandeur. It also creates a fascinating contrast with a still fairly beloved Tom Cruise movie that came out in this century.

What is the name of John Blackthorne's beloved ship?

The Erasmus
The Queen Elizabeth
The Black Ship

Who of the following is NOT on the Council or Regents?

What title does john blackthorne receive from lord toranaga, what's the code name of lord toranaga's final plan.

Crimson Sky
Scarlet Sky

What is Lady Ochiba-no-kata's real name?

Which of the following languages is spoken on shogun.

Mandarin Chinese

What real life figure is Lord Toranaga based on?

Tokugawa Ieyasu
William Adams
Ishida Mitsunari
Yodo-no-kata

Who is the Lord of Izu?

What does "anjin" mean, according to the shogun podcast, what is the real life name of the falcon that appears on the show, a story about japan versus a story about the west.

It is probably no accident that between Shōgun and The Last Samurai , we have two projects which bookend the West’s relationship with feudal Japan. In Shōgun , viewers are asked to witness a fictionalized account of the first time an Englishman stepped foot on Japanese soil in 1600—the real-life counterpart to Blackthorne being a British pilot named William Adams—and in The Last Samurai , we follow an entirely fictional American U.S. Army captain, Nathan Algren (Cruise), as he bears witness to a romanticized depiction of the upheaval which occurred after the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s and 1870s—which is to say when the West came back with a vengeance to Japan.

It’s even fun to realize that the events of Shōgun directly influence The Last Samurai since the series is about the birth of the Tokugawa shogunate, which essentially banned Western culture and (eventually) Westerners for the next 200 years. This did not end until the American Navy showed up in Tokyo Bay in 1853 and threatened Japan to open for trade with the West at literal gun and cannon point.

Still, the subtlest and most profound difference between the two American productions, then, is that while Shōgun (2024) is about feudal Japan as understood from a Western gaze, The Last Samurai is about the West looking at itself in a Japanese mirror. It’s a minute distinction, but one with profound effects on both projects.

While Shōgun admittedly begins with Blackthorne realizing he and the remainder of his crew are about to be marooned on the mysterious island of Japan, the series is ultimately about the complex and confounding world he finds himself in as Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada, who also appears in The Last Samurai ) plays a shrouded game of thrones with Japan’s other great clan leaders on the cusp of civil war. The series is not about Blackthorne, but this larger chessboard on which the Englishman has made himself (and his cannons) a highly valued piece.

Conversely, The Last Samurai eschews nuance in favor of broad Hollywood sentimentality and movie star necessities. While we first glimpse Watanabe’s brilliant portrayal of Lord Katsumoto (a fictionalized version of the real-life rebellious samurai Saigō Takamori) during the film’s prologue, that opening is actually narrated by an alien (and English) voice which insists, “Japan was made by a handful of brave men. Warriors willing to give their lives for what seems to have become a forgotten word: honor.”

Right off the bat, The Last Samurai asks us to romanticize and reduce samurai culture as not a thousand-plus year-old profession and class in a medieval system of governance, but rather as an ideal impossible for American culture (either in the 19th century or implicitly today) to attain. The prologue’s narrator is asking us to compare Watanabe’s visual sense of Zen and honor (as he is literally meditating) with where we next find our true protagonist, Cruise’s Capt. Algren: at the bottom of a bottle, with the retired cavalry officer drunk and hungover as he sits in a dark room decorated by American flags left to wrinkle on the ground.

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Like Kevin Costner’s Civil War veteran Lt. Dunbar in Dances with Wolves , Cruise’s Algren is weighed down by the guilt and atrocities he witnessed while riding beneath the American flag. Samurai even takes it one step further since Algren’s trauma stems from the horrors he saw committed by both sides—including himself—during the various American Indian wars on the frontier. While we eventually learn of Katsumoto’s grievances with imperial Japan’s rush toward modernization, it is told mostly in broad strokes and with a single, caricatured villainous bureaucrat he must overcome: a Japanese railroad baron (Masato Harada) who whispers poison in a young emperor’s ear. By comparison, Algren’s shame and disdain for his former commanding officer—a fellow by the name of Custer who got 211 fellow cavalrymen massacred—is much more acute and inescapable.

The Last Samurai is not the story of an American encountering the last days of the samurai, but rather how the samurai helped an American put to bed the demons of his experiences in the American West. As such, the samurai are themselves only understood through those rose-tinted glasses that the film’s opening narration instructs us to use: warriors willing to give their lives for that “forgotten word” of honor.

It’s a classic, if better intentioned and articulated, replay of the “noble savage” trope in Dances with Wolves . As such, the only dimensionality offered to that lifestyle is by the performances, which include future Shōgun producer and star Sanada, as well as a magnificent Watanabe who gave an Oscar-nominated turn as the samurai rebel who takes a curious interest in Cruise’s bewildered American prisoner—a bit like how a gifted veterinarian might adopt and nurse a wounded stray dog. Screenwriter John Logan provides enough nuance to that relationship that Watanabe can flesh it out to haunting effect. Still, at the end of the day, the samurai culture is merely a frame in which Cruise’s protagonist can stare at his own reflection—and eventually shave off the trauma of his past by donning a kimono and katanas.

Meanwhile in Shōgun Blackthorne does eventually transition into wearing Japanese attire, including the katanas because he is told to by his captors/hosts/maybe pseudo-friends. However, the show never feels the need to depict the Englishman “going native” as an act of either salvation or heroism. There is, indeed, something faintly comical about Jarvis’ stranger stumbling through high Japanese society with blades he doesn’t know how to use and bouncing off folks who view him a bit like their court jester.

The culture clash likewise becomes a much richer source of drama and tragedy when it is not only about how it affects Blackthorne’s well-being. In fact, it is arguable the true star of the show is neither the Westerner nor the would-be shōgun of its title, Sanada’s commanding Toranaga. Instead its Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) who walks away with the series. She’s a woman of an ancient house which has fallen into recent disgrace due to the actions of her father. As a consequence, Mariko yearns to redeem her honor by committing seppuku (ritualized suicide). Yet her lord Toranaga forces her to endure, including as Blackthorne’s translator (having converted to Catholicism, Mariko is well-studied in Western languages).

It is how Mariko chooses to interpret Blackthorne’s brutish European sailor outbursts (or not) that becomes the source of humor , horror, and sometimes despair in the series. Theirs is a complex romance, and much like the relationship the Westerner also has with Toranaga and the other members of the ensemble, it is not only in service to his betterment. The longer the series goes on, the more Blackthorne adopts positive aspects of Japanese culture including (humorously) learning to take a bath everyday. Yet a running theme is how everyone in the show refers to the other cultures as barbaric—be they English, Japanese, or Roman Catholic Portuguese—while all sharing the capacity to commit atrocities in their own way.

Blackthorne does not see “honor” he hopes to emulate in Toranaga, Mariko, or the wily and untrustworthy Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano). But he does witness with immense skepticism things that are as troubling to our modern worldview as Blackthorne’s early modern English one. His disgust with Mariko’s thirst for suicide, as well as how other people he meets are so willing to throw away their lives to win a political argument, is treated as an equally valid counterpoint to any romanticization of the Bushidō code.

By avoiding the ethnocentric view that most Western fiction pursues in regard to feudal Japan, Shōgun becomes an actual exploration of feudal Japan, if from a Western POV.

Who Does and Does Not Need to Be Saved

There of course remains the aspect of The Last Samurai which comes into sharpest criticism these days: its standing as a white savior movie. The film undeniably and intentionally checks many of the boxes found in this cliché: a white man meets a native people he comes to admire while also simultaneously slotting into the role of a leader amongst them.

While Watanabe’s Katsumoto is the true clan leader in the movie who redeems Algren, the film rather incredulously sees the Tom Cruise character ride ahead of Katsumoto and all the other samurai as they leave for battle at the end of the film, and later while riding slightly behind Katsumoto into the final battle, Cruise is still allowed to dominate the shot over Watanabe and be in a greater pride of place than Katsumoto’s actual lifelong right-hand man, Ujio (Sanada). It is also the American’s counsel Katsumoto seeks before they ride to glory and doom against modern weapons of war.

However, it should be noted that as a brilliant screenwriter, The Last Samurai ’s John Logan seems aware of the loaded connotations he’s playing with and at least tries to sidestep them more gracefully than films with similar narratives. The samurai culture, again, fixes the white man (the point of the film), but you could also say they are the ones who therefore save him. Furthermore, he doesn’t actually lead them to victory. After witnessing how the American cavalry ultimately decimated various Indigenous tribes of the American West, Algren is aware that Katsumoto’s cause is doomed when he rides beside him—and indeed they are massacred almost to a man.

Still, the story is about how the native culture fixes the white man’s soul, and the white man at least guides them to the most brilliant defeat possible against cannons and rifles. (Also amusing fact: to even further simplify its glorified image of the samurai, the film ignores that samurai had actually been using gunpowder for more than a century up to this point, including Katsumoto’s real-life counterpart in the failed 1877 uprising.)

Comparatively, Blackthorne makes himself useful to the budding shogunate in the new TV series—but only to a point. He and Toranaga have a slow-boiling bromance that heightens when the Briton teaches the man who would be king how to dive, or instructs his men how to properly use cannonfire in battle. However, Toranaga is always acutely aware that Blackthorne, or “the Anjin,” is a foreigner of malleable allegiances. He does not directly rely on him to win his chess match against his enemies. And in the penultimate episode of the show, he even predicts Blackthorne’s limited loyalties and set them against other members of his clan who are not-so-honorable, like the duplicitous Yabushige. There is likewise an ambiguous reading in the warlord’s decision to exploit Mariko’s suicidal impulses to create a political crisis in Osaka that will be advantageous to Tokanaga’s maneuvering.

There is a moral and ethical opaqueness to Shōgun that is all the more impressive when one considers how Western fiction has often depicted feudal Japan as a simple land of sacrifice and honor, which perhaps only needed a bit of Tom Cruise movie charisma to save the Bushido code for the 20th century—which if you stop and think about did not serve anyone well by 1945!

None of this is a damning criticism of The Last Samurai . The film is immensely watchable, filled with great performances, a sincere gracefulness, amazing production design with Zwick’s familiar eye for period detail, and some top notch action sequences. There may never be a better cinematic rendering of samurai versus ninjas than that one scene! However, it is a product of its time, which in only 20 years feels surprisingly remote to the sophistication and depth achieved by Shōgun . The contrast has become its own kind of culture shock.

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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‘His Energy Was Intimidating’

The last samurai director ed zwick on the “joyous, challenging, and exhausting” experience of working with tom cruise..

For years, Edward Zwick was primarily known as a television guy. He had come up through the TV ranks and had created, along with his writing and producing partner, Marshall Herskovitz, the hit series Thirtysomething . Later, he would also executive-produce the well-received Once and Again and My So-Called Life . Along the way, however, he also became a director of cinematic spectacles. Glory (1989) and Legends of the Fall (1994) were big award-winning period epics. Courage Under Fire (1996) and The Siege (1998) were topical, large-scale dramas.

In his lively new memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood , Zwick tells lots of stories about his up-and-down journey through the film and television industries. Among the most fascinating is his account of the making of 2003’s The Last Samurai , a rousing war epic about a 19th-century rebellion by a group of samurai opposed to the rapid westernization of Japan. In it, Tom Cruise plays an alcoholic American officer, haunted by his role in the Indian Wars, who joins in with Ken Watanabe’s Lord Moritsugu Katsumoto, the leader of the uprising and the “last samurai” of the film’s title. (At one point, Zwick writes, Russell Crowe called him about trying to play the Katsumoto character.)

The film was a huge hit, and today it feels emblematic of a bygone era of entertaining, star-driven period adventures. It’s also revered in the stunt community for its elaborate action sequences, full of impressive riding and sword-fighting, and its sprawling battle scenes. “It wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia , but we tried,” Zwick writes. The story of its making offers an insightful glimpse into what it takes to mount such a massive production with the biggest star in the world.

Excerpt from ‘HITS, FLOPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS’

Until this moment in my career, getting a movie made had been a war of attrition. The subjects that interested me never seemed to fall neatly into a category that was easy for executives to understand, by which I mean, to sell. I’d come to expect a kind of siege mentality — haranguing, shaming, whining, bullying, and generally making myself so annoying that I occasionally managed to wear them down until they gave me a start date. Such difficult births are quite common in the business. Every year during the orgy of self-congratulations we immodestly call “awards season,” you can count on someone in a tuxedo giving a tearful acceptance speech citing the decades of rejection that preceded such a halcyon moment. So much of Hollywood studio culture is fear-based: executives afraid that the wrong decision could cost them their jobs. I was accustomed to a gradual and sometimes grudging process of acceptance, often taking several weeks of dailies, or a first cut, sometimes even a successful preview for them to get excited about what they had on their hands. The reasons a studio decides to make a film are often quite obscure unless we’re talking about a superhero movie or big IP (intellectual property). On such corporate crusades, long before a single frame is filmed, a legion of marketers, accountants, and distributors have already run the numbers on its profit-and-loss profile, a release date has been set, and an advertising campaign is underway. But the path of a “one-off” (that’s what they now call regular movies) as it struggles to swim against the mainstream is littered with revised drafts and broken hearts. Deliberately or not, a studio will do anything it can to make a script more “accessible.” One thing you learn, when they call it a “passion project,” you know you’re in trouble.

The Last Samurai was an entirely different experience: the only time it felt like a studio was genuinely enthusiastic about what I had in mind. The movie had a green light from the moment Tom said yes. It was like the no-bid, cost-plus contracts I’d heard about between military contractors and the Defense Department. A million dollars of R&D to scout locations, hire department heads, and figure out logistics? No problem. A trip to Japan to do research and meet actors? Let us make the reservations for you! You want to shoot on three continents? Great idea! Within weeks we were in headlong prep. My first trip to Japan was overwhelming; I visited museums, met historians, and traveled all over the country. There was so much I didn’t know, and even more that we’d gotten wrong in the script. Since at least a third of the movie would be in Japanese, I needed help with the dialogue. The great screenwriter Yô Takeyama agreed to join me.

Vickie Thomas (the casting director whose impeccable taste I’ve come to rely on for 20 years) had arranged for me to meet Yôko Narahashi in Tokyo. Yôko’s ostensible role would be to help cast the movie, but it was soon clear she would be much more to me than a casting director. Bicultural and brilliant — her father had been the Japanese ambassador to Sweden — she was also a theater director and a teacher with her own acting school. In addition to serving as my translator and interlocutor, her insights into the nuances of culture and behavior, on set and off, saved me from innumerable gaffs, while her intimate knowledge of her country’s unusual casting traditions was a godsend. Like many institutions in Japan, casting was often hierarchical. To play a part like Katsumoto, starring opposite Tom Cruise, it was assumed that Hiroyuki Sanada — often referred to as the “Tom Cruise of Japan” — would be cast in the role. But upon meeting Ken Watanabe, I was so taken with his unusual blend of strength, humor, and emotional availability that I decided to cast him.

Upon hearing of my choice of Ken, the Japanese representatives from Warner Bros. made no secret of their displeasure. They informed the executives back in Burbank that this was a terrible faux pas . It was Hiroyuki Sanada himself who came to the rescue. By agreeing to play Ujio, Katsumoto’s majordomo, he was making a strong statement in support of Ken and the movie. I couldn’t have known that after surviving a battle with leukemia years before, Ken had found himself in debt to shady managers; at that time, the Yakuza was heavily involved in the business. To pay them off, for several years he had been obliged to play whatever roles on Japanese TV came his way, no matter how uninspiring, and it had hurt his career. In our early rehearsals, Ken seemed somewhat tentative, but Sanada’s deference never failed to endow his presence with the necessary aplomb. Day by day as his self-confidence grew, so did Ken’s performance. By the time we were ready to shoot, he had grown into the role, owning not just his size as the character but as a leading man going mano a mano with the biggest movie star in the world.

While reading a book about the Meiji dynasty I had seen a picture of an ancient monastery and asked if we could visit it. It turned out that the 700-year-old Buddhist compound was located atop a mountain outside Himeji, a midsize city. To reach it required taking a rickety funicular. But once there, walking the hand-hewn floors through temples shrouded in clouds was like being cast back in time. When I told the Warner physical production people I wanted to use it as Katsumoto’s home, I expected to be laughed out of their office. But I had forgotten this was a Tom Cruise movie. They figured out a way to make it work. There were just as many things I would have liked to shoot in Japan that proved too costly; there simply wasn’t the kind of open space and vistas we needed to stand in for the pastoral splendor of 19th-century Japan. I had been to New Zealand once before with my wife and kids for a backpacking trip on the Routeburn Track, a three-day trek through alpine meadows, emerald-green tarns, prehistoric ferns, and spectacular vistas. It was a north-south mountain range, as was Japan’s. Lilly Kilvert, John Toll, and I spent weeks flying up and down the North and South Islands in a helicopter ordinarily reserved for the prime minister (a Tom Cruise movie, remember?) until we found a pristine valley in which to build Katsumoto’s village. There, Lilly would bring Japanese carpenters to build the houses in the traditional sashimono style of wood joinery without nails. She also began planting rice paddies that wouldn’t be shot until the following spring.

Back in L.A., it was a cold, rainy winter. One wet evening, Marshall Herskovitz and I were scheduled to meet with Tom about the script. In addition to helping me produce the movie, Marshall had joined me in the rewrite — not only because the burdens of preproduction were beginning to overwhelm me but because, much as I hated to admit it, I knew his unique gift would bring the script to the next level. Also, because he insisted. He has a great love of the epic form, and his ideas and criticisms, however painful to hear, were brilliant. Tom quickly recognized Marshall’s ear for dialogue as well as his gift for sly humor and began to rely on him. This became something I depended on more and more as the demands of shooting drew closer.

After Marshall and I finished another draft, I got a call from Robert Towne’s assistant asking if I was available to meet. I knew that Towne — one of the few living writers in my personal pantheon — had an informal arrangement with Tom whereby he sometimes quietly rewrote his movies. I drove over to his house in the Pacific Palisades, harboring more than a little dread. Had Tom asked him to rewrite us? It turned out Towne didn’t want to talk about the script, except to point out several things he’d enjoyed. Apparently, he just wanted to take my measure. Still, as we spent a pleasant couple of hours talking about John Fante novels, it did feel like he was giving me his blessing.

That night, Marshall and I arrived at Tom’s house for a meeting and were told he was down at the tennis court. We followed a winding path through the fog toward the sound of strange percussive whacks, each accompanied by loud, guttural cries. Below us, we could barely make out five spectral figures hacking at each other with wooden swords. Though principal photography was still six months away, Tom was already working out every day, determined to do the scene where Algren takes on four assailants in a single take without a cut, chanbara style, as in the old samurai movies. No stuntman was going to play his part.

There was one stunt we knew would be too dangerous. The moment the samurai are first revealed, emerging on horseback out of the misty forest, needed to be violent and terrifying. As we had written it, Algren, a former cavalry officer, draws his saber and fights while on horseback. As the conclusion of the sequence, Marshall and I had imagined him getting T-boned — his horse deliberately struck by another horseman, with Algren knocked to the ground and his horse falling on top of him. There was no way to do the stunt with Tom on a real horse, where the slightest wrong movement could put his head in the path of a swinging metal sword, nor could we really have one horse hit another, let alone have Tom’s horse fall on top of him. So how to do it?

These days it would all be done with CG, but that was still years away. To shoot it in cuts using a stuntman would inevitably look staged and give the gag away. It was Paul Lombardi, our special-effects guru, who suggested building an animatronic horse. It took months of experimentation, repeated failure, and reimagination, but six months and a million dollars later, Tom Cruise is fighting on horseback in the middle of a mêlée, or so it appears, and the real Tom Cruise has a live horse falling on him. I’ve never counted how many seconds of the fake horse — Wilbur, as he affectionately came to be known — are in the final cut, and I defy anyone to identify him without going frame by frame. All I know is they’re the most expensive frames of any film I’ve ever shot.

Our first day of shooting was in the Buddhist monastery. Riding up the funicular at dawn, we were enveloped by clouds. Moments later we broke through to be confronted with what looked for all the world like a cliché — the perfectly round, bright-red sun of the Nippon flag rising over distant mountains and setting the ancient temples aglow. Soon after, the entire crew gathered under the gaze of a 14-foot-high Buddha. Surrounded by hundreds of lit candles and dizzying incense, we accepted the monks’ blessings of good luck for the film. At lunch they even made us seasonal bento boxes of sashimi adorned with colorful fall leaves. It was as magical a time as I’ve ever had on set.

After lunch we were to shoot the first scenes to be performed entirely in Japanese. I’ll admit to being a bit nervous, yet as soon as the actors began to speak, I realized that although I couldn’t understand the words, their intentions were perfectly clear. At first, I’d confer with Yôko after every take. Did their performances seem natural? Were their line readings correct? If I had an adjustment, she would communicate it to the actors. But after a while, I began to allow my instincts to guide me. These were scenes we’d written ourselves, after all, so it made sense I might be able to follow along with its beats and rhythms. It was, I suppose, what directing silent films must have been like. Most surprising was how many times I’d see Yôko nod her head after I said I preferred a particular take. Remarkably, it was often her favorite as well. I was especially pleased as Ken’s sense of humor began to inform his performance. Over the course of a taxing shoot, that quality would prove to be a saving grace. He is one of the most delightful, soulful men I’ve ever met.

We shot in Japan for two weeks, mostly in Kyoto. After we wrapped on the last night, Sanada took Ken, Marshall, Yôko, and me to his favorite karaoke bar. I walked in expecting something glitzy and high end. It was just the opposite. No bigger than a ship’s stateroom, there were only five seats at the bar, and Sanada had reserved the place just for us. It’s possible he knew just how boisterous we would get. When Sanada entered, I thought the bartender was going to faint. It turned out, in addition to Yôko’s many talents, she was also a songwriter whose tunes were there on the jukebox. Ken turned out to have a spectacular voice and loved to sing American pop standards. (He would go on to be nominated for a Tony for his performance in The King and I .) One of my favorite memories of all time is seeing Marshall, a nondrinker, shit-faced for the first time in our long friendship, clutching the mic and crooning “Danny Boy” at the top of his voice in a rich basso profundo.

We flew back to L.A. for the second leg of our worldwide production. It’s hard to describe my wonder and delight as I walked onto the Burbank lot and found the famous New York Street completely transformed into Tokyo, 1876. Lilly’s production design was a marvel: every detail from the live eels to the wood joinery. Same with costume designer Ngila Dickson’s hand-painted kimonos and gleaming armor.

On our first day of shooting in Burbank, I happened to glance behind me and see Steven Spielberg. Moments later, David Fincher appeared, and then Cameron Crowe. How coincidental that they’d all “just happened” to be on the lot that day. I would later discover each was courting Tom to be in their movies and this was a chance to get a bit of face time. I will confess to being the tiniest bit self-conscious giving direction with that intimidating trio on my six (as they say in Top Gun ). But their visit prompted an oddly charming and very revealing reaction from Tom. While Fincher, Crowe, Marshall, and I were chatting behind my chair, the still photographer asked if he could take a picture. Tom must have been with Spielberg at the time, but when he heard about it, he asked for a copy and had himself photoshopped into the shot. Apparently, even movie stars have FOMO.

Shooting went well the first week, and then we hit our first speed bump. It seems the neighboring houses had grown tired of the noise caused by productions shooting deep into the night and had gotten wind that we were planning more late nights by the little pond at the border of the studio known as “Gilligan’s Lagoon.” That’s where we had built a set for Katsumoto’s Tokyo home. As a compromise we agreed to shoot split days — from noon until midnight — rather than work all night long.

We had already agreed not to use black powder in the antique rifles — again, because of the noise. The solution by the armorer was to turn the weapons into what essentially were battery-operated toys. When the trigger was pulled, a flash would appear, followed by a puff of smoke. The sound would then be added in post. It sounded swell in theory, but from the outset of shooting Katsumoto’s escape we discovered the gag rarely worked, and even when it did, it took far too long to reload for the next take. After only an hour of shooting, we were several hours behind.

Going into the second night of filming the sequence, we had lost at least half a day and I was getting worried. How would the studio respond to us falling behind so soon? To executives always ready to panic about the budget, it would augur worse to come. At lunch — in this case, that meant 6 p.m. — I was scheduled to have a meeting with the marketing department. Sweaty and stinking from the pond, I walked into a huge conference room and found it brimming with no less than 40 smiling faces. For an hour they regaled me with their plans for the movie’s release: billboards, talk shows, magazine covers, trailers, international premieres. I did my best to pay attention while unable to banish the single thought hammering my brain — We’re behind. We’re behind. How bad will it be tonight?

It got worse. A couple of hours later, while still moving at a crawl, I was waiting for a lighting setup that was taking much too long (night lighting setups always take too long) and anxiety-mainlining peanut M&M’s at the craft-services table when Tom ambled up. He greeted me with his usual, peppy “How’s it going?!” I wasn’t in the mood to respond in kind.

“I don’t know,” I moaned, “the sequence isn’t really working. Those stupid guns are killing us. We’re already behind and I’m worried we’re going to have to come back and reshoot at least half of it.” He listened as I went on. Then he looked off into the night.

That was all he said before touching my shoulder and walking away. I stood there, confused. Couldn’t he tell I was upset? Had he been in this situation so many times that he just took it in stride? It was then that I began to realize the gulf between my experience and Tom’s. No matter how many movies I’d made until then, no matter how many battles I’d had with studios, or times I’d gone over schedule, there was still some part of me that needed to be a good boy.

When I ran into Marshall, I recounted my non-conversation with Tom. Mar shall smiled and said, “He knows there’s not going to be a card in the credits that says, ‘This movie was made on schedule.’ ” Then he touched my shoulder exactly the way Tom had done and headed back to the set. Later that night, as I was setting up a shot, Cruise was passing by and stopped. “How ya doing, boss?”

“Better,” I said.

“Good, GOOD! You know what we get to do tonight?”

“MAKE A MOVIE!”

As he walked away, I realized I’d missed the subtext of our earlier interaction. It had been Tom’s nonconfrontational way of reminding me I was the director, and that directing was a samurai job. He didn’t want to see me shaken. We were going to be shooting for another hundred days. If I was willing to compromise now, I might compromise tomorrow, and that’s not the way he rolled.

I called the studio in the morning and told them we needed to reshoot. They didn’t say a word in protest.

After New Year’s, our huge traveling circus moved to its third continent. New Zealand was a dream. My family and I stole a delirious week in a house by the Tasman Sea before production started up again. The bracing weather changed hourly as storms moved in and out while we explored snowcapped mountains, shadowed glens of dense ferns, and fog-shrouded fjords. My daughter learned to surf, and my son went backpacking. I even had time to remember I was married. Sooner than I would have liked, Kevin de la Noy called to say I needed to come into the production office. Kevin had taken over as line producer once the scope of our ambitions revealed the need for someone of his unique genius. I had first met Kevin 15 years before when he was the location scout on the first incarnation of Shakespeare in Love . In the years since, this English logistics genius had risen to rockstar status: planning the logistics for the climactic battle in Braveheart , organizing the beach assault in Saving Private Ryan . I could hear in his usually jolly voice that he was beginning to suspect his greatest challenge loomed in the weeks ahead.

There are few Japanese in New Zealand. How then to populate the cities, seaports, and villages we had built? The answer was obvious: bring them over. This would prove harder than it seemed. In addition to auditioning thousands of “fighting extras” so as to find 700 with the ability to learn 19th-century fighting tactics, rounding up another couple hundred women and children, getting them all the necessary visas, and then leasing the 747s to fly them in, Kevin had to create an entire colony of translators, doctors, and chefs to accommodate them all.

Our base of operations was New Plymouth, a small oil-and-gas town on the North Island. Within a week it looked like an occupying army had taken over. Every laborer with a pickup truck was put to work, every piece of heavy machinery was commandeered. The restaurants and hotels were booming. As the extras came to recognize me as their meishu (a classier honorific than “director”), I couldn’t walk down the street to buy toothpaste without accepting and returning any number of gracious bows. Not that I minded.

In addition to the Japanese cast I had hired Tony Goldwyn as Colonel Bagley, Algren’s former superior officer in the Seventh Cavalry, and Billy Connolly as Sergeant Zebulon Gant, in what I liked to think of as the Victor McLaglen role — the gruff, stalwart noncom straight out of a John Ford movie. Tony, a talented director himself, was a joy to be with, on set and off, while Billy was irrepressibly funny in the way I imagined working with Robin Williams must have been. At times I literally had to beg him to stop making us laugh so we could get back to work. Ken Watanabe’s commanding performance continued to thrill me while I came to count on Sanada’s vast experience in martial arts (known as Seiten wo Tsuke , literally “reach beyond the blue sky”) to help me stage the many fighting scenes. Koyuki, the actress playing the role of Taka, Algren’s reluctant host, was the greatest revelation. Her understanding of period behavior was expressed with exquisite simplicity and elevated every scene.

Working with Tom was joyous, challenging, and exhausting. His energy was intimidating. It may sound surprising, but the one formative experience we had in common was that we both wrestled in high school. Like all wrestlers, we shared a tolerance for hard work and punishment. Tom was in every scene for 120 shooting days, yet he never showed the slightest sign of fatigue, not even after getting the shit kicked out of him by Sanada take after take in the mud and pouring rain. Tom likes to think of himself as being chased by a shark, which he means metaphorically. I hope. His mantra when giving notes is, “How can we ratchet up the pressure on my character?” By which he means, he wants a bigger shark.

He is also legendarily, at times maddeningly , self-confident, no matter if it’s about doing a dangerous stunt or a six-page dialogue in a single take. But there were times that very self-assurance could look opaque on film. And it was the opposite of what I wanted to see in him when, on the eve of the final battle, he has to say good-bye to Higen, the son of the man he killed. We were to shoot the scene at magic hour, an ineffably beautiful time in the village we’d constructed in New Zealand. Given that Algren knows he probably won’t ever see it again, I thought the fading light was appropriate. But it also meant Tom would have time for no more than a single take. This, I thought, gave it a degree of difficulty much higher than the most difficult stunt. If I hoped to get him to the right emotional place, I felt I needed to touch some vulnerable part in him that I’d yet to see him reveal in the movie.

I don’t mean to suggest he wasn’t completely open to my direction. If I had asked him to do a scene while standing on his head, I’m convinced he would have been willing to try. If I had said, “Listen, Tom, could you be just a tad more emotionally revealing in this scene?” he would have given his all. But the result would have invariably ended up feeling forced — precisely because he was trying to give me what I wanted. I didn’t want him to try to make something happen. I wanted it to happen.

While filming their earlier scenes together I had noticed how sweet and attentive Tom had been with the young actor playing Higen. Over the months of getting to know Tom, I’d also observed how close he was to his 8-year-old son, Connor. As the crew scurried to make ready, we were already losing the light. I took Tom aside.

“Tell me about your son,” I said.

He looked at me, surprised. I knew Connor had just returned to L.A. and Tom wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. For a moment Tom was quiet. And then he began to talk. It doesn’t matter what he said in those few short moments in the fading light. I watched as he looked inward, and a window seemed to open and his eyes softened.

“Go,” I said, gently nudging him into position on the porch. He nailed the scene with the depth of feeling I had loved in his best performances. I should also mention his Japanese pronunciation was spot-on.

The light was gone. The AD called, “Wrap.” As Tom walked past me on his way down the mountain, he caught my eye and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Excerpted from HITS, FLIPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood by Ed Zwick. Copyright © 2024 by Ed Zwick. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood

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Product Description

All Regions. Epic Action Drama. Set in Japan during the 1870s, The Last Samurai tells the story of Capt. Nathan Algren, a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the Emperor attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation for more Westernized and trade-friendly government policies, Algren finds himself unexpectedly impressed and influenced by his encounters with the Samurai, which places him at the center of a struggle between two eras and two worlds, with only his own sense of honor to guide him.

Product details

MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.39 x 0.39 x 0.5 inches; 2.4 ounces
Item model number ‏ : ‎ u-c-36543
Director ‏ : ‎ Edward Zwick
Run time ‏ : ‎ 154 minutes
Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, French, Spanish
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08Y4ZSNM5
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
#449 in Military & War (Movies & TV)
#6,365 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs

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“I really enjoyed that scene”: Hiroyuki Sanada’s Favorite Scene With Keanu Reeves in John Wick 4 Didn’t Involve a Single Gun or Katana

H iroyuki Sanada has been an unsung hero in Hollywood since the early 2000s where he has starred in many supporting roles in major blockbusters. From his dedicated performance in Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai to starring in the biggest film of all time Avengers: Endgame, the actor has made a name for himself in Hollywood and is highly respected in the industry.

Sanada made a big impact in the fourth John Wick film playing Koji, one of John Wick’s friends from the past. While his action sequences and martial arts skills were expectedly brilliant, the scene that leads up to where he strikes up a conversation with John is narratively interesting. Sanada stated that he loved that intimate character-driven scene rather than his big action sequences.

Hiroyuki Sanada Loved His Character’s Heart-to-Heart Moment in John Wick: Chapter 4

Hiroyuki Sanada played a pivotal role in the fourth John Wick film playing the head of the Osaka Continental in Japan. Keanu Reeves ‘ John Wick seeks refuge in the Continental and the two characters have a heart-to-heart talk about the meaning of life and the emerging threat that John might not be able to ‘shoot’ his way out this time.

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The scene is particularly poignant and signals that the characters have had a history together and share a very close bond. This character-driven moment was pointed out by Sanada in an interview with Geeks of Color when talking about working with Reeves and his own relationship with him in real life.

The actor stated, that for that particular scene, they did not have to work to develop some kind of chemistry as they were friends in real life. For Sanada, the scene felt like him having a drink with Reeves in real life and so it had a natural flow, with more information being conveyed through the eyes.

This poignant aspect of the scene made it his favorite rather than all the killing (using katanas and guns) and awesome action sequences one expects from the franchise. He said,

“I love the scene between Keanu and I, drinking whiskey and just chat chat. No action, just talking. But I think we could use the chemistry from our own friendship or long time knowing each other. So easy to make a scene feel like we are drinking real whiskey, you know? [laughs] Just looking to each other, we can talk with something in our eyes. So, I really enjoyed that scene.”

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The scene proved to be one of the standouts from the film, as for once, audiences got to see John having a meaningful conversation with an old friend. While the action sequences are awesome to look at, such intimate and character-driven scenes provide layers to the character and add to the legacy of John Wick in the mythology of the franchise.

Hiroyuki Sanada Leaves the Door Open For A Second Season of Shōgun

Shōgun recently ended in a surprisingly nuanced and poetic way instead of having an epic battle between its warring factions. With Hiroyuki Sanada ‘s Toranaga already knowing the outcome of his confrontation with Ishido, fans have wondered whether there will be a second season 2 to continue the character’s story and delve further into how he manages a peaceful Japan devoid of conflict.

In an interview with ScreenRant , Sanada revealed that the series covers the entire James Clavell’s novel Shōgun . With no follow-up book, Sanada stated that the makers could lean on real history if they decide to do a second season, but he has no idea if it will be made. Sanada said,

“We’ve finished the novel, so we don’t have any more James Clavell novels, but we have real history. The Japanese know what happened after that, so yeah, who knows? Yeah, well, it depends on the idea, I think. I have no idea. We have a model, so I know everything he’s done until he dies.”

Bad New for Hiroyuki Sanada Fans: Shogun Directors “Open” to Season 2 on One Condition

The series has provided closure for the characters and many will be apprehensive of doing a second season when the first is already a complete whole. The show has already been deemed one of the best of the year and while season 2 is up in the air, it is sure to be nominated for several TV awards and Emmys.

Shōgun is on Hulu or Disney+ (bundled with Hulu). Watch Keanu Reeves and Sanada in John Wick: Chapter 4 on Peacock.

Keanu Reeves as John Wick in 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4

Screen Rant

This 20-year-old tom cruise movie can lay the blueprint for his future after mission: impossible.

Tom Cruise won’t be able to do Mission: Impossible movies forever, but one of his old movies may have paved the way for his acting future.

Tom Cruise's action star status faces a challenge as he ages, so exploring villain roles could be the key to his future success after Mission: Impossible .
A return to the character depth of his role in Collateral could provide Cruise with exciting new opportunities in his career.
Practical stunt work sets Cruise apart in action films, but taking on antagonistic roles could help him stay relevant in the industry.

Tom Cruise has been a movie star for over forty years, and one of his most underrated films could be the key to the next phase of his career after Mission: Impossible . Cruise, in his most recent star era, has become synonymous with daring stunt work and large action set pieces in his blockbuster films. The two most notable examples are his long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, which is currently filming its eighth installment, and Top Gun: Maverick , which was the highest-grossing film of 2022 .

In many ways, Cruise is as popular as he's ever been and remains one of the last examples of a true movie star. There's just one issue he faces, and it's one that will only get worse with time: he's now in his 60s. He's still in amazing shape for his age and can still perform all the stunts his action roles require of him. Yet, at a certain point, Cruise just won't be able to physically accomplish these feats anymore , and the question will arise of what he will do to define the next era of his career.

10 Movies That Defined Tom Cruise's Career

Tom cruise should follow collateral's blueprint after mission: impossible.

The answer regarding a future after Mission: Impossible lies with one of Cruise's most memorable roles as the cold-blooded hitman Vincent in Michael Mann's Collateral . Collateral follows a single night in the life of cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who is forced to transport Vincent around L.A. as he crosses off targets on his hit list. The film doesn't just feature excellent action scenes but also a fascinating back-and-forth between the two leads. Many long exchanges of dialogue happen within Max's cab, and the audience sees him and Vincent argue philosophically about the value of human life and their differing ideologies.

Cruise's movie star charisma brought layers of charm to Vincent's sociopathic demeanor

Cruise had to train for Collateral since it was an unexpected role, as the actor had never played the main villain of a film before, and to this day hasn't done it again since. The uniqueness of this notion paid off, as Collateral proved to be a healthy hit. It grossed $220 million worldwide from an estimated $65 million budget (via Box Office Mojo ). Cruise's movie star charisma brought layers of charm to Vincent's sociopathic demeanor, and it is still widely considered one of the best performances of Cruise's long and illustrious career. A return to this type of role would be an exciting prospect for the actor.

Every Michael Mann Movie, Ranked Worst To Best

Villain roles can help tom cruise stay relevant.

As Cruise gets older, it'll become more challenging for him to remain at the center of these action franchises. Unlike films like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny , which heavily relied on CGI to assist 81-year-old Harrison Ford with the action scenes, Cruise's movies use their practical stunt work as a selling point. Top Gun: Maverick had Cruise flying real jets , and Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One had him jumping off a massive cliff on a motorcycle. Too much CGI would cheapen the impact of these stunts, which have become a big part of Cruise's brand.

However, if Cruise takes on more antagonistic parts in movies like Collateral going forward, h e could not only avoid putting his body at risk in as many huge stunts but also access an untapped well of potential film roles . Cruise would still be a selling point in whatever franchise he chooses to be a part of, and he'd be able to explore the darkness he displayed as Vincent all those years ago. It'd be an exciting development for fans to witness, full of possibilities, and could prove to be the key to Tom Cruise staying relevant through the 2020s and beyond.

Source: Box Office Mojo

Tom Cruise pictured partying during daughter Suri Cruise's 18th birthday weekend

The mission impossible star shares suri with ex-wife katie holmes.

Tom Cruise is a father-of-three and on April 18th, his youngest daughter Suri Cruise turned 18.

The Mission Impossible star shares Suri with his ex-wife, Katie Holmes , and the birthday girl was pictured looking happy as she walked around New York City with a friend, while clutching onto a birthday present.

Suri is thought to have celebrated more over the weekend with her mom, while Tom was pictured in London at another milestone birthday party.

Tom was one of the many celebrity guests at Victoria Beckham's 50th birthday , which was held at Oswald's.

Other well-known faces in attendance included Eva Longoria, Salma Hayek and Marc Anthony. The Spice Girls also reunited, with Emma Bunton, Geri Horner, Mel B and Mel C posing with the birthday girl.

Tom Cruise at Victoria Beckham's 50th birthday party

Tom was all smiles in a number of photos posted on the night, looking smart in a tuxedo. As well as Suri, Tom is also father to adopted grown-up children, Isabella 'Bella', 31, and Connor, 29, who he shares with ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

More Parenting

How Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise's relationship with Tom Cruise will change once she turns 18

Suri Cruise showcases special bond with mom Katie Holmes after dad Tom Cruise missed her 18th birthday celebrations

Katie Holmes' 'silent birth' with daughter Suri she shares with Tom Cruise

Katie Holmes' impressive rule for daughter Suri, 18

Suri Cruise makes a bold fashion statement in NYC as she celebrates 18th birthday in new photos

Katie Holmes on why only daughter Suri Cruise would wear heels at the age of five

How Suri Cruise's lifestyle with mom Katie Holmes has drastically changed ahead of adulthood

Katie Holmes' clever parenting trick that's protected teenage daughter Suri during her childhood

Katie holmes' lookalike daughter suri turns 17 as she follows in her dad tom cruise and mom's footsteps, suri cruise looks exactly like mum katie holmes in new instagram snap, tom cruise's time apart from son connor sparked emotional response on set, former director reveals, katie holmes' lookalike daughter suri, 17, almost towers over her mother in rare nyc outing.

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COMMENTS

The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai is a 2003 epic period action drama film directed and produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz from a story devised by Logan. The film stars Ken Watanabe in the title role, with Tom Cruise, who also produced, as a soldier-turned-samurai who befriends him, and Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada ...
The Last Samurai (2003)
The Last Samurai: Directed by Edward Zwick. With Ken Watanabe, Tom Cruise, William Atherton, Chad Lindberg. Nathan Algren, a US army veteran, is hired by the Japanese emperor to train his army in the modern warfare techniques. Nathan finds himself trapped in a struggle between two eras and two worlds.
The Last Samurai
Tom Cruise stars in this sweeping epic set in Japan during the 1870s as Captain Nathan Algren, a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of ...
The Last Samurai (2003)
Former U.S. Army Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a bitter alcoholic traumatized by the atrocities he committed during the American Indian Wars, is approached by his former commanding officer Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn) to train the newly created Imperial Japanese Army for a forward-thinking Japanese businessman Omura (Masato Harada) (an industrialist and pro-reform politician who ...
The Last Samurai
Apr 26, 2022. Rated: 4/5 • Feb 16, 2021. Feb 15, 2021. Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is an American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art ...
The Last Samurai movie review (2003)
Its power is compromised only by an ending that sheepishly backs away from what the film is really about. Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe co-star, as a shabby Civil War veteran and a proud samurai warrior. Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a war hero who now drifts and drinks too much, with no purpose in life.
The True Story Behind 'The Last Samurai'
This Edward Zwick-directed movie starred Tom Cruise as an American military officer who was hired by the Japanese government to train their army to combat the rising rebellion led by a group of ...
Watch The Last Samurai (2003)
AMC Presents: After he is captured in battle an American military advisor embraces the samurai culture he was hired to destroy. 10,968 IMDb 7.8 2 h 34 min 2003. X-Ray R.
The Last Samurai (2003) Official Movie Trailer
The last samurai extended movie trailer. Tom Cruise portrays an American captain of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, whose personal and emotional conflicts bring hi...
BBC
The Last Samurai (2004) Reviewed by Nev Pierce. Updated 08 January 2004. Contains strong violence. Tom Cruise goes from Top Gun to shogun in The Last Samurai, an action-packed historical epic. He ...
Was The Last Samurai Tom Cruise's last great movie?
Samurai man: Tom Cruise in his 2003 historical epic 'The Last Samurai' (Warner Bros) A sk Steven Spielberg who his favourite superhero is and he'll probably say Tom Cruise. Last year, the ...
The Last Samurai
Tom Cruise stars in this sweeping epic set in Japan during the 1870s as Captain Nathan Algren, a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the Emperor attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation for more Westernized and trade-friendly government policies, Algren finds ...
The Last Samurai (2003) Stream and Watch Online
Released December 1st, 2003, 'The Last Samurai' stars Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall, Tony Goldwyn The R movie has a runtime of about 2 hr 34 min, and received a user score of 76 (out of ...
The Last Samurai
Purchase The Last Samurai on digital and stream instantly or download offline. Tom Cruise stars in this sweeping epic set in Japan during the 1870s as Captain Nathan Algren, a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the Emperor attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation ...
Is The Last Samurai Real At All? True Story Explained
The Last Samurai true story adds a lot of context to the Tom Cruise period drama. The movie chronicles a real-life Japanese rebellion from the 19th century but fictionalizes several historical events and people. The Edward Zwick drama received four Oscar nominations upon its 2003 release and has sparked debates over the years about its subject ...
WarnerBros.com
About. Tom Cruise stars in this sweeping epic set in Japan during the 1870s as Captain Nathan Algren, a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the Emperor attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation for more Westernized ...
The Last Samurai
About this movie. Set in Japan during the 1870s, THE LAST SAMURAI tells the story of Capt. Nathan Algren (TOM CRUISE), a respected American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's first army in the art of modern warfare. As the Emperor attempts to eradicate the ancient Imperial Samurai warriors in preparation for ...
20 Years Ago, Tom Cruise Made a Controversial War Epic
Discussions of The Last Samurai often focus on the obvious incongruity of a movie where Tom Cruise dons samurai armor to become the steward of traditional Japanese culture. The picture of Cruise ...
Shogun Fixes The Last Samurai's Greatest Weakness
While Watanabe's Katsumoto is the true clan leader in the movie who redeems Algren, the film rather incredulously sees the Tom Cruise character ride ahead of Katsumoto and all the other samurai ...
The Last Samurai
Watch #FullScenes from #TheLastSamurai. An American military advisor embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy after he is captured in battle.SUBS...
"This Is How He Wins": Tom Cruise's Subtle Acting Elevates Last Samurai
The Last Samurai was a departure from typical Tom Cruise movies up until that point. At the time, the actor was (and still is) best known for his association with action-packed franchises like Mission: Impossible and sci-fi films like Minority Report and Vanilla Sky.However, The Last Samurai represented a slight detour in Cruise's career as he took on a more dramatic role in an epic historical ...
'Last Samurai': Ed Zwick on Tom Cruise's Intimidating Energy
The Last Samurai. director Ed Zwick on the "joyous, challenging, and exhausting" experience of working with Tom Cruise. For years, Edward Zwick was primarily known as a television guy. He had ...
Tom Cruise filmography
Tom Cruise filmography. Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer who made his film debut with a minor role in the 1981 romantic drama Endless Love. [1] [2] Two years later he made his breakthrough by starring in the romantic comedy Risky Business (1983), [3] [4] which garnered his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor ...
Amazon.com: The Last Samurai : Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall
Run time ‏ : ‎ 154 minutes. Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall. Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ Spanish, French, English. ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08Y4ZSNM5. Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1. Best Sellers Rank: #113,205 in Movies & TV ( See Top 100 in Movies & TV) #520 in Military & War (Movies & TV) #7,360 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs ...
"I really enjoyed that scene": Hiroyuki Sanada's Favorite ...
From his dedicated performance in Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai to starring in the biggest film of all time Avengers: Endgame, the actor has made a name for himself in Hollywood and is highly ...
This 20-Year-Old Tom Cruise Movie Can Lay The Blueprint For His Future
As Cruise gets older, it'll become more challenging for him to remain at the center of these action franchises. Unlike films like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, which heavily relied on CGI to assist 81-year-old Harrison Ford with the action scenes, Cruise's movies use their practical stunt work as a selling point.Top Gun: Maverick had Cruise flying real jets, and Mission Impossible ...
Tom Cruise pictured partying during daughter Suri Cruise's 18th
Tom Cruise is a father-of-three and on April 18th, his youngest daughter Suri Cruise turned 18. The Mission Impossible star shares Suri with his ex-wife, Katie Holmes, and the birthday girl was ...

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