John Man

You would think from most portrayals of samurai that they were solely a medieval phenomenon. They should have been. The middle ages were their heyday. Yet they survived not only as anachronisms but as a vital part of Japanese society until their destruction in the rebellion of 1877, as anyone who has seen Tome Cruise in The Last Samurai knows. That's about the only historical fact you should take from the film, which is hardly more about samurai than Star Wars. It is a beautiful made, well-acted hall of mirrors, splicing together bits of fact and fiction to make a story appealing to western tastes.