The Last Samurai

EPIC CLASSIC IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD!
Based on Amazon's recommendation, I ordered both Kenji Misumi's THE LAST SAMURAI and Hiroshi Inagaki's SAMURAI TRILOGY. I've always been a big fan of the ZATOICHI and LONE WOLF AND CUB films. So, I was pretty interested in checking out THE LAST SAMURAI. I was floored. I could not believe that I had never heard of this movie. It's Epic in every sense of the word. I was really shocked at just how good this movie was. The film follows a group of characters during the last days of the Shogunate. The film does a beautiful job of conveying the development of these friendships. That's not to say the film is light on action. There are probably at least six major fight sequences in the story. It just makes it all the more gripping when you actually care about the characters. I was also surprised at how strong a role the female characters had in the story. Though she is not top billed, Ayako Honami gives an amazing and poignant performance. This movie is FIVE STARS all the...

TRULY ONE OF THE GREATEST SAMURAI FILMS OF ALL TIME!
Years ago, I had purchased a bootleg of this film on VHS. Over the years, I had re-watched it several times and I've always enjoyed it. I definitely recognized it as a classic. However, there seemed to be some "rough" spots. Eager to upgrade and support legitimate companies, I ordered the new DVD release. Wow! What a difference the new translation makes. It was like watching the movie for the first time!

Not only does the film tell the story of "The Last Samurai," but the film also represents the end of an era of epic films. The cast is uniformly great. Ogata Ken giving a standout performance. This film has such a great cast, there's no way that this film would be produced today. It would simply be too expensive to assemble all of these stars in one movie.

The DVD comes chock full of bonus materials. Short of an audio commentary, I would be hard pressed to list any bonus features that were left out.

A true classic of the genre that is given the...

A great buy for samurai fans
If your fond of Samurai movies this is great one to see. I was very impressed with the movie it has a great story based on some of the history of Japan. The movie keeps a good pace with the action (the sword play is great) and the actors do a great job and there is even a little bit of humor throw in there. A great buy and definitely should be added to any ones collection.

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