I was first facinated by samurai culture as a kid when the SHOGUN miniseries came out on TV. This movie attempts to convey some of the same things, and it does so in a few ways. Most of the time, though, just when I was getting curious about some facet of the main character’s environment, the movie would brush it aside to get back to the long action-hero battle scenes. The suggestion that Japan’s “last samurai” was really an American captain who mastered their ways in a year of captivity is a conceit that unfortunately permeates the film.