Offical website
Blu-rays, DVDs & more
eBay affliate link
Art of the Movies
Buy posters on MoviePoster.com
IMDb
The Last Samurai movie stills
Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Mostly it just reminds us anew how difficult it is to make convincing entertainment on a grandiose scale, especially when all involved are taking themselves so terribly seriously. Read more
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Too much surface and not enough depth. Read more
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: An intelligent action film. Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A stunning spectacle of cultural violence and a loving tribute to the great Japanese samurai movies. Read more
Elvis Mitchell, New York Times: The uneven Samurai is a can-do movie that's far more effective at communicating emotion in bigger scenes than in more intimate ones. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: As movie-star vehicles go, Last Samurai is a fine, well-crafted example. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A handsome, well-crafted production with strong work by the magnetic Watanabe and by Cruise, who continues to make riskier choices than he needs to. Read more
Boston Globe: Big and square and rousing, Edward Zwick's epic drama has been brought to the screen with all the muscle and splendor Hollywood can call up. Read more
Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: 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. Read more
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: Despite the slow-moving and overly reverential parts, Algren's passage from bitter, self-loathing alcoholic to a man renewed and committed is emotionally satisfying in a way many bloated recent Hollywood productions can't accomplish. Read more
Paul Clinton (CNN.com), CNN.com: A spectacular epic adventure, and Cruise is stunning as Captain Nathan Algren. Read more
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Nearly all of The Last Samurai's deficiencies spring from the screenplay... As respectful as it is about the similarities of different cultures, it also doesn't quite elude an aura of noble otherness. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A handsome epic. Read more
Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: It has the flourish and even the delicacy of those whose life it celebrates. Read more
Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: 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. Read more
Jan Stuart, Newsday: Through it all, Tom Cruise stares soulfully past the camera, on toward a catering truck where sushi rolls and ham sandwiches dwell side by side in harmony. Read more
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: 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. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's not a great or even particularly provocative drama, but it is well made, and one that adult adventure fans can go to without embarrassment. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: 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. Read more
Rex Reed, New York Observer: Even though The Last Samurai is brutal, exhausting and so not my kind of movie, it is extremely well-made and undeniably engrossing. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Grand and undersized, truncated and overlong, The Last Samurai reminds us just enough of what epics used to be to disappoint. Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Last Samurai earns every minute of its near two-and-one-half hour running length. There's no fat to trim, and no sense that scenes have been included to pad the ego of the director and/or his star. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic. Read more
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to. Read more
Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: As the story evolves into a drama with as much heart as muscle, Cruise adapts with it. Read more
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Grandly overblown and deeply cornball, The Last Samurai is a visually detailed historical recreation of 19th-century Japan that's as thin as rice paper in ideas. Read more
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: It looks great in a costume spectacle way, and it has some truly terrific action sequences. Read more
Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: 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. Read more
Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Competently mounted in its studiedly immersive, elongated way, Zwick's earnest costume epic dresses a knee-jerk, reactionary sensibility in exotic garb. Read more
USA Today: It's all so stolid and humorless, even the scenes in San Francisco, without compensating epic sweep. Read more
Todd McCarthy, Variety: Disappointingly content to recycle familiar attitudes about the nobility of ancient cultures, Western despoilment of them, liberal historical guilt, the unrestrainable greed of capitalists and the irreducible primacy of Hollywood movie stars. Read more
J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The least one can say for this costume action flick is that it hits bottom immediately. Read more