Tom Cruise plays a Civil war vet named Nathan Algren who has been spending the last 10 or so years since the end of the war riding around the old west with General Custer and murdering Native Americans. But he feels bad about it so that makes it ok. He is hired to go to Japan and lead an army of Imperial Japanese troops against the Samurai, who the movie parallels to the Native Americans in their customs, battle tactics, and ways of life.

Nathan quickly realizes that the Japanese Imperial troops suck at battles and the Samurai are great at them. Then he gets captured by the Samurai and gets to know the Samurai leader, Katsumoto, played by Ken Watanabe. He sympathizes with them because he feels bad for murdering a bunch of Native Americans and because he’s cared for by the hot wife of a Samurai he killed during the battle in which he was captured.

He knows that eventually the Samurai are going to get slaughtered by the Imperial Japanese regardless of how superior the Samurai are at fighting, because the Imperials have superior weaponry. Sure enough, when the Samurai have their big showdown with the Imperials at the end, they are slaughtered by cannons, gatling guns, and rifles. Katsumoto dies and Nathan doesn’t. The end. Somehow this takes two and a half hours.

Hey, the obsession with masks continues! Tom Cruise doesn’t wear one himself, but there is a great deal of focus on the attire and masks of the Samurai. Near the end of the movie, he changes his clothes. I know that doesn’t sound exciting but trust me it’s a big moment for everybody involved.

There are also some legitimately fun fighting scenes and the movie is occasionally funny, but not very funny. You won’t laugh out loud, you’ll just smile and feel a little bit sad because you just smiled at a joke that really is only funny if you’re being charitable, and you’ll realize that the movie is a bit awkward and you’re looking for an excuse to laugh or be distracted for a bit. After all, it’s a movie in which Tom Cruise plays a Samurai. I know it claims it’s based on true events but come on.

Early in the movie the narrator says something about the Moderns and the Ancients, a reference to ancient Greece. Nathan also compares the last doomed battle between the Samurai and the Imperials to the Battle of Thermopylae (famously portrayed in the movie 300). I suppose that is enough of an indicator that The Last Samurai is an allegory for the inevitable death of tradition. If so, it doesn’t really teach us anything, it simply feels sorrow.

It is actually, in a lot of ways, an ode to some of the classic Japanese films of cinema and is not too different in tone from Seven Samurai or Yojimbo. In this way it is appropriately lonely, slow, and sad. It is also fitting that most American westerns are ripoffs of Japanese Samurai films, and that The Last Samurai merges those ideas. Perhaps you could argue that The Last Samurai is a bit of a cipher eulogizing the storytelling of a bygone era. Nuance, patience, and tradition have become overwhelmed by explosions. Artisanship has been trumped by mass production, craft made irrelevant by technology.

It might be true, but being true and being engaging aren’t the same thing. In the immortal words of Jeffery Lebowski, “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole.”

Next: Collateral