Tom Cruise plays an alcoholic former member of Custer's Seventh Calvary who signs on to train the Japanese Army in modern warfare in post Meiji Restoration Japan. Captured during a skirmish between the Army and a group of rebellious samurai led by Katsumoto(Ken Watanabe) he eventually finds himself enamoured of their cause and sides with them.

Personally I found a lot of this movie to be the same old pseudo Zen Buddhist/Confucionist cliches that have been in a zillion Hollywood films about Asia. The film also shamelessly takes the samurai side, when in reality the samurai rebelled against their loss of feudal priveledge as much as anything else. There is also the fact that the samurai class themselves were divided on the question of Japan's future, with many supporting opening to the West and the abolition of feudalism. Ironically the idea of bushido would be shamelessly exploited by Japan's imperialists to justify their activities, especially during the period leading up to WW2.

The scene where ninjas attempt to assassinate Katsumoto is well done and exciting but rather anachronistic. The active role of ninjas in Japanese affairs all but ended with the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate more than 250 years earlier than the 1876 date of this story. Its sort of like having a film about 1920s Chicago gangsters where Al Capone narrowly escapes being killed by Indians in warpaint riding horses and using bows.

Shichinosuke Nakamura was well cast as Emperor Meiji, looking quite a bit like the real Meiji. Japanese actress Koyuki certainly can pull off looking sad, which she does a lot of in this flick.

Its ironic that veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Ujio, is in a non-English speaking role, as he played the Fool in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear in 1999-2000.

I read an interesting article about Seizo Fukumoto, who plays "Bob" a.k.a The Silent Samurai. Apparently, he is the most well known example of a unique breed of extra in Japanese Cinema that specializes in doing dramatic death scenes. I forget what the name for these guys is, but it means "sliced-up actor." No one is sure exactly how many times Mr. Fukumoto has died on screen, but even the most concervative estimates are in the thousands.

I just think that would be such a cool job to have: "Yeah, I die to make the hero look good."

re: The anachronistic ninja attack. It's also well outside the usual MO to engage in an unsubtle mass attack, almost like there was some hollywood pressure for more big fight scenes. Still, perhaps the film's biggest conceit was that the Japanese would come to America to look for people to train their soldiers. The bit about looking to foreign powers for advice on all manner of things was true enough but the United States wasn't even on their map. When Japan wanted military advice, they went to the Prussians. Let's compare recent developments at the time of the film:

USA: Fought a war with itself which it both lost and won, fought against groups of native peoples who were outnumbered and outgunned by orders of magnitude.

Prussia: Under Bismarck, defeated Austria and France and unified a collection of small states into one nation.

Hmm, which do you think the Japanese would be more interested in getting advice from?