Last Samurai, The

Empire Will Lawrence

The Last Samurai is much more fun than a mere history lesson.

Time Richard Schickel

A movie that demands our surrender -- to its energy, to its bold-stroke moviemaking, to its acting (particularly by Cruise and Watanabe, who blend musing and graceful muscularity) and, above all, to its romantic vision of a lost world.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A rousing tale that combines high adventure with emotional effectiveness. This movie works because it never loses sight of the characters no matter how epic the scope becomes.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

In his first role since turning 40, Cruise displays a likable new maturity, and an unexpected willingness to look weak and foolish.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Hugely satisfying entertainment that will attract a broad spectrum of audiences around the world. Zwick fully exploits the star power at his disposal, pairing off Cruise and Japanese star Ken Watanabe as two larger-than-life warriors.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A handsome epic, a brave-hearted 19th-century man-saga from the director who made the period piece man-sagas ''Glory'' and ''Legends of the Fall.''

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

May fall short of its great model, "Seven Samurai" (almost all action movies do), but it's miles ahead of most of the gadget-ridden adventure epics around now.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

An almost perfect example of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking at its most expensive, well-calculated and safe: opulent production values, solid acting from its name star, distinguished performances from people surrounding him, Big Themes concerning sacrifice and honor, and a ridiculous finale full of superhuman achievements.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to, from the rolling green hills to the galloping horses to the "Lohengrin"-like theme music on the sound track.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Even if you think Cruise has never had a moment of doubt in his life, he makes Nathan's self-loathing palpable, and the character's regeneration has a hoarse, cautious purposefulness that's striking.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Cruise holds the center of the film with a sharply focused performance, though his bonding with the wise samurai chieftain (Ken Watanabe) is noticeably more ardent than his soggy romance with the stoic wife of a man he killed in combat.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Taken on the level of spectacle rather than of sense, The Last Samurai affords the sort of fizzy enjoyment that can come with epic movie endeavors, including a meticulously detailed world unlike our own, an excellent supporting cast and some pulse-pounding fights.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Though serious, well-crafted and handsome, lacks most of the pungency of the epitome of the genre, "Lawrence of Arabia."

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

What is not debatable, however, is that Cruise is an actor of limited emotional resources, one who lacks the presence required for the film’s protagonist, a character intended to inhabit more than one dimension.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Grandly overblown and deeply cornball.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Depends on how you're feeling about Tom Cruise--as opposed to the character he's putatively playing.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Cruise isn't horribly miscast, a la Tony Curtis in "The Son of Ali Baba" or John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror," but he doesn't miss by far.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's not just Hollywood convention that gets in the way of the story, it's the lack of depth, heft and heart at its core.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Most watchable during the majestic brutality of the battle sequences. This is not only because of the handsome staging, but also because the keywords sacrifice and honor are evoked with verve and simplicity, more so than in the "exchange of idea" chats between Algren and Katsumoto, which sound like statements being read into the Congressional Record by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The only history that bears a real influence on The Last Samurai is the history of Hollywood moviemaking, and the unfortunate way it has of turning extraordinary stories into hopelessly ordinary ones.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The Last Samurai is an idyll in which the savageries of existence are transcended by spiritual devotion. That’s a beautiful dream, and it gives the film a deep pleasingness, but the fullness of life and its blackest ambiguities are sacrificed.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Unwilling to offend, Zwick whitewashes a culture in which brutality and contemplative beauty were inextricably intertwined and, afraid to alienate audiences, he shies away from the story's logical downbeat conclusion, replacing it with an "ambiguous" ending that recalls, of all things, "The Road Warrior."

Slate David Edelstein

All its themes are laid out like index cards on a screenwriter's bulletin board, and each plot turn seems so inevitable that you'll think you saw this movie in a previous life. (You did.)

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

Director Edward Zwick has an ace up his sleeve, in addition to all the glorious scenery and pulse-pounding battles, and that’s Ken Watanabe.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Too many mind and the story grows tedious or absurd. No mind and the spectacle suffices.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

In The Last Samurai, the body count is almost as high as the dead-brain-cell count.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A crock - a pandering epic that's as phony as it is condescending.

USA Today Mike Clark

Never recovers from its failure to grip or engage in the early going.

USA Today Staff [Not Credited]

Never recovers from its failure to grip or engage in the early going.

Variety Todd McCarthy

As rich in period and historical background as it is deficient in fresh dramatic and thematic ideas.

The New Yorker David Denby

Zwick can’t find anything fresh in this deeply pious East-meets-West stuff. The movie comes close to dying between battle scenes. [8 December 2003, p. 139]

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

What it lacks is artistry, those small touches of personality that might have distinguished its lugubrious history lesson from a bunch of pretty pictures with captions telling the story.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

This is a Tom Cruise vehicle, pure and simple, and that means it's destined to be the biggest chunk of guilty white-boy wish fulfillment since Kevin Costner got down with the Sioux in "Dances With Wolves." In fact, the parallels are all but plagiaristic.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Worst of all, nothing happens that we don't see coming. Nothing. If, as Nathan seems to believe, surprise is a crucial element in any campaign, then The Last Samurai might win a battle or two for your attention but is doomed to lose the Oscar war.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Less a heart-stirring historical study than a nostalgic fantasy, built on a foundation no firmer than Cruise's superstar persona.

Newsweek David Ansen

There are pleasures to be had in the handsome, heroic The Last Samurai. But they' all on the surface.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

When the script, by Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz and John Logan, doesn't sabotage the images, and the great cinematographer John Toll turns action into poetry, The Last Samurai emerges as a haunting silent movie.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Patently intended to be a serious exploration of a cultural encounter, but this intent withers through a lack of writers' gravity and a mass of action clichés.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Watanabe's charismatic performance and a couple of colorful minor characters aside, The Last Samurai has little to recommend it.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Despite its intelligent agenda, swollen heart and fabulously epic surface, amounts to a didactic banality: a white guy's politically correct lesson abroad.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The least one can say for this costume action flick is that it hits bottom immediately.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Cruise pedals hard through The Last Samurai, and the exertion shows. In fact, the whole picture is belabored and lumbering.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

There's some cool sword-fighting. But still, it's junk.