Last Samurai-worth seeing?

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Originally Posted by Despair

I didnt notice much of CGI landscapes, except for coast town docs, and San Francisco skyline. Everything else looked 100% real. No problem with Sky as well. Its like you neat picking trying to find the flaws, instead of just enjoying it.

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You know what's really sad? Me and my friends are getting so jaded by the excessive amount of CG in movies lately that we're asking each other every five seconds if we think something is CG. I remember the big battle at the end, when they showed a big group of troops, and we were like, "Are they CG? Well, how about those guys?" when it was somewhat obvious that they were real. Still, I did notice some of the cityscapes were CG and the one huge wide shot of the battle at the end when they showed everyone fighting hand to hand for a few seconds was very obvious CG. Otherwise, I think they did most everything else for real.

Well, When the camera flies above the end battle field, there was CGI used to create additional soldies/samurai, but rest of the battle scenes, were CGI free and Wire Free. It was such a relief to see swordfighting without slow motion and wire work.

The scene were after defeating 5 assisins, Algren sits and replays the events of combat in his head was perfect. It was such a EQ moment for me :)

HBO had a showing of the making of Last Samurai..I think it was about 30mins-1hour long.

The female lead of this movie was one of the stars of my favorite japanese Soap opera (Love Complex) and thusly, I want to see this.

This is the one time I havfe to say "Cruise's acting performance" in this movie was believable and fantastic. Not outstanding, not amazing; but fantastic. I truly enjoyed the film and want to see it again. Probably won't since the price of a ticket is so darn high. The CG I didn't notice, I've become so saturated with it, that I've become oblivious too it. That's a shame, but thats the truth.

Shit, sorry guys. I forgot about the spoiler issue....

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Originally Posted by DarkCrow676

I have to disagree with you there. Not all Samurai fought in one last battle. Some accepted the change and continued to live there lives, others fought back. Algren was by no means the last Samurai. Now I'm no expert on the meji era, but thats just how I see it.

One thing that irkerd me during the movie was during the first big battle how Cruise's character was able to kill several samurai let alone defend himself while injured against four samurai at one time, then later, he gets his ass kicked fighting one on one. Personaly, i think Algren would have been dead in that first battle long before Katsamoto had a chance to stop his death.

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During the scope of the movie though... in reality there would've been the but the village presented to us the olden times. That is why I said in the scope of the movie. In the scope every able Samurai fought and died on that battlefeild, except someone who represented the EXTREME future (development wise).

And in the last irk you had... it was fate. It wasn't his destiny to die then. That's part of the story. It's not so literal, you have to see past some of this.

The movie was awesome albeit absolutely predictable. The plotlines were exactly the same as any other "outsider" movie.

But, the movie was beautifully shot and it was well executed. The battle scene was very very nice and I'm glad the ninjas don't leap from rooftop to rooftop and they don't disappear in clouds of smoke. :D

Tom Cruise on the other hand is starting to become like Keanu... he's starting to only have 2 or 3 expressions. In this movie, for nearly an hour of the movie, he maintained the same facial expression where he looked like he was staring into space... like he was concentrating really hard at a point 10 feet in front of him.

Really, the Japanese people in this movie... some of them act circles around him.

Other thing is that I'm REALLY glad that we finally have a movie where the white outsider doesn't get to bang the ethnic girl twice before the final climatic scene.

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Originally Posted by negitoro

Tom Cruise on the other hand is starting to become like Keanu... he's starting to only have 2 or 3 expressions. In this movie, for nearly an hour of the movie, he maintained the same facial expression where he looked like he was staring into space... like he was concentrating really hard at a point 10 feet in front of him.

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Well, he was always either drunk or seriously messed up in the head from killing all of the indians in his past. So I would think it would be natural for him to walk around looking guilty and kind of misplaced; not happy,scared,or one of many other numerous attitudes that would have belied how the charcter truly was feeling.
As the movie went on and he started to get to the point when he could redeem himself we were able to see some more emotions beside the "1,000 yard zombie stare"-- or at least I thought so...

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Originally Posted by negitoro

Other thing is that I'm REALLY glad that we finally have a movie where the white outsider doesn't get to bang the ethnic girl twice before the final climatic scene.

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Actually I was kind of disappointed that we didnt get to see any bangage :p

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Originally Posted by Jetman

Well, he was always either drunk or seriously messed up in the head from killing all of the indians in his past. So I would think it would be natural for him to walk around looking guilty and kind of misplaced; not happy,scared,or one of many other numerous attitudes that would have belied how the charcter truly was feeling.

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I understand it from the context of the story... but for instance, Katsumoto and Taka... both were consistent emotionally throughout the movie, but I felt more emotion and more depth from their performance than I did from Cruise. Their singular expressions felt like there were just more subtle nuances to them.

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Actually I was kind of disappointed that we didnt get to see any bangage :p

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LOL... I'm just so tired of that cliche... that every ethnic female immediately wants to jump the white man outsider's bones.