Weekly Movies Films CINEMATHE LAST SAMURAI

A Guide to Political Orthodoxy regarding the Correct Cinematic Entertainment. For Progressive Thinkers


"Last Samurai" is available for rent; $1.99 at Blockbuster

The movie is entertaining, spectacular, but too slow. All in all a good rent. But is the story another Hollywood Left script or is it telling it "like it was". I know a little about Japan and lived there for a few years. All the landscape and views of farming etc. are accurate. The war against the Samurai did happen. But here is the Left vs History.

The year 1868 found Japan with no banks at all. Not a single railroad. Not a single factory. They were mired in the 16th century with a Samurai class that contributed nothing to society other than to feast on it. They spent every waking hour practicing their "craft" which was killing. They lived in villages where everyone else worked but them. Women were no better than slaves. Their caste system included "untouchables". The movie would have you believe that Samurai didn't use guns; that is false. In spite of 250 years of barriers some guns did get through and the Samurai had plenty of them and used them. There was no way that Japan could modernize so long as this Samurai Class was around. They were the bad guys. The guys who killed everyone who stood in their way. The people who had power in Japan finally decided to get rid of them after fifteen years of trying to negotiate with what had become in a modern world, terrorists with a code. They appointed a teen aged Emperor and endowed him with Holy qualities.

The people who wanted change imported educated Americans to teach, Europeans to give them weapons of war and tactics plus manufacturing know how, and sent their "best and brightest" to America to learn at our universities. The people in power finally confronted the Samurai with European tactics and weapons, and in an "ethnic cleansing" wiped them out. The movie has the Samurai as the good guys. Glamorizes the suicide attack and attackers. The Samurai were the suicide bombers of 19th century Japan. The movie is pro-terrorist so long as they have a "code". Nothing about the Koran is mentioned but we get it.

Japan was an economic power within fifteen years of stamping out the Samurai; railroads all over the country, manufacturing, and a far higher standard of living for their people. The downside of all this was the rise of the Military to a position of power. In 1907, thirty eight years after wiping out the Samurai, the Japanese defeated Russia in war. Russia was a big power with a modern fleet, guns, the whole nine yards. Japan was the first country "in the east" to beat Europe in a war. A wake up call to China. And to everyone else.

By 1900 everything about the Samurai was dead except "The Code of the Samurai" which is still around today and is what motivated the Kamikaze and the cruel torture tactics of their military in WWII. It is also why their soldiers on Guadalcanal chose to starve to death rather than surrender. When the fighting stopped there the Japanese who were left alive weighed less than eighty pounds per man.

The movie is another Left glamorization of foreign "values". It's up to you to recognize it. Do you think the "code" of Samurai "Honor" is better than our Constitution and Bill of rights? The movie is a total Hollywood Left hit piece on America and our values.