My Family Kitchen
Book
'For me, cooking has always been about sharing and spending time with pals and family, luring them...
Twisted Luck
Book
When I told him to go to hell, I never realized it would be a trip for two. All I wanted was...
The Dark Side
Book
In this dark and gripping sci-fi noir, an exiled police detective arrives at a lunar penal colony...
The Iliad
Homer Alexander and Caroline Alexander
Book
High on Olympus, Zeus and the assembled deities look down on the world of men, to the city of Troy...
Old English Shorter Poems: Religious and Didactic: v. I
Book
Alongside famous long works such as "Beowulf", Old English poetry offers a large number of shorter...
Damned by Despair
Book
Obsessed with his own salvation, the hermit Paulo dedicates himself to ten years of prayerful...
Joey Santiago recommended Marquee Moon by Television in Music (curated)
Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food
Book
The king of beautiful pub food has collected all of his best ideas into this proper cookbook, ready...
David McK (3369 KP) rated The Last Samurai (2003) in Movies
Feb 6, 2021
And this.
Which is a strong contender for one of the best of those films.
The film stars Tom Cruise (who, for once, is not playing Tom Cruise) and Ken Wattanabe, with the former a world weary US Civil War veteran (suffering from PTSD?) who is hired to train the modernising Japanese army, and the latter a Samurai leader who thinks Japan is losing its identity; moving too fast into the future.
Captured by that Samurai leader following an early battle, Algren (Cruise's character) soon finds himself beginning to wonder is he fighting in the right side...
Yes, the plot is somewhat akin to 'Dances with Wolves' (or even 'Avatar'), and I've heard the charge of the film being a White Saviour story - a charge, I have to say, that I do NOT find any merit in: indeed, I would argue the opposite (that Cruise's character is saved rather than the one doing the saving) is more true.