![]() Some of these talks sound like Socratic exchanges: Algren at first refuses to speak, but gradually, during a long, rainy winter of captivity, he begins to have philosophical conversations with the other man about the ethics of war and warriors. Katsumoto, who conveniently speaks English, explains he has kept Algren alive because he wants to know his enemy. It's at this point that "The Last Samurai" begins to reveal itself as more than an action picture. Leading his untried troops into battle, he is captured and faces death - but is spared by a word from Katsumoto, who returns him as a prisoner to the village of his son. He is told the samurai are "savages with bows and arrows," but sees that the American advisers have done a poor job of training the modernized Japanese army to fight them. Into this cauldron Algren descends as a cynic. Embassy is a clearinghouse for lucrative trade arrangements. But Japan has been seized with a fever to shake off its medieval ways and copy the West, and the West sees money to be made in the transition: Representatives from the Remington arms company are filling big contracts for weapons, and the U.S. The role of the samurai leader Katsumoto (Watanabe) is complex he is fighting against the emperor's men, but out of loyalty to the tradition the emperor represents, he would sacrifice his life in an instant, he says, if the emperor requested it. ![]()
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