When it comes to discussing the best historical epics of the modern era, the conversation tends to revolve around the same few movies, which is completely fair when a great deal of them weren’t of a particularly high standard. Despite both being one of the best and most successful, though, The Last Samurai has never really gotten its due.
The only blockbuster adventures set in the distant past to arrive during the post-Gladiator boom that earned more money at the box office than the Tom Cruise vehicle’s $456 million were Ridley Scott’s Oscar winneer and Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, while The Last Samurai is indisputably a much better film than the slew of subpar historical stories to emerge throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Sure, Ed Zwick’s elegiac tale of one man’s slow-burning redemption landed four Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nods (including Best Actor for Cruise), but based on the conversation that’s been unfolding on Reddit, there are a lot of Last Samurai supporters willing to die on the hill of its greatness and unremarkable 66 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Of course, the film isn’t without its flaws (Billy Connolly’s Irish accent being one of the most egregious), and there was inevitably accusations of forcing a white savior narrative onto a Japanese tale, but even Oscar-nominated co-star Ken Watanabe disagrees with those sentiments.
The Last Samurai undoubtedly features one of Cruise’s best and most understated performances as we follow the booze-soaked Nathan Algren caught between two worlds, while the battle sequences are impeccably staged and utterly exhilarating. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the fan favorite’s release, but it looks as though the reappraisal is well underway already.