With starvation ravaging the land, Yoshimura's wife offers to commit suicide so their family can have meat on the table... Yoshimura elects instead to leave his family of three (soon to be four) in search of gainful employment. Before you can say wandering ronin, he's teaching swordplay to the Shogun's men and dispatching them what needs dispatching. His buddy Saito, however, doesn't really like him and friction develops between the two. Saito even attempts to cut Yoshimura down, taking him by surprise, but the latter proves too adept at swordplay to be so easily dispatched. They develop a reluctant friendship (at least on the part of Saito),with Yoshimura attempting at every turn to cash in on what he knows so that he can send the money back home. In one of the film's most interesting scenes, Yoshimura examines the body of a fellow samurai who has been killed and determines that the dead man was slain by a left-handed swordsman. Saito is a lefty. Rather than risk the wrath of higher-ups, Saito pays Yoshimura to keep his mouth shut. In another scene, their divergent philosophies are made clear. "I'm only alive because no one will kill me," Saito laments. "I kill because I don't want to die," the ever-practical Yoshimura responds. At one point, someone sums up the whole notion of duty and conscience: "A real samurai apologizes by spilling his guts." There are a couple of great fx shots in WHEN THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN and the two leads are outstanding. The filmmaking is superb. The one and only complaint I have is the long, drawn out ending: it has to be the longest crying jag I've ever seen in a samurai movie.

This was a beautiful movie, yet a difficult one to watch. The main character, played very well by Kiichi Nakai, is a man of the land. He loves his country and his family and he is also a samurai. That puts him into a very uncomfortable position when money is too scarce for his family to be able to survive. He then does the dishonorable thing, he leaves the clan in order to earn money for his family.

The story in itself is the message of the movie, with all its details, not the main storyline. The action is placed in the time when samurai are being replaced with gun powder and Japan is in great turmoil. In the end, he returns to his homeland and restores honor to his family, so it's a circular kind of tale, but in the meanwhile, you see how different people, in different situations and social classes, react, how friendships are made and unmade.

What makes this movie better than most is the way the main character is constructed. He is far from the cliché of the samurai, a lot more human. If this could have been told in a shorter way, everyone would have been happier, though. While the last scenes are heartbreaking, they are also too theatrical for my taste.

I have seen Twilight Samurai compared with this movie. I do think that TS was better, but this is still a very good movie.

Beginning in 1899, ageing samurai Saito (Koichi Sato) brings his child into a doctor's office. While the doctor's wife tends to the sick child, Saito and the doctor, Ono (Takehiro Murata),begin talking when Saito notices a photograph of his old colleague and master Yoshimura (Kiichi Nakai). Saito begins to tell his story from his first meeting with Yoshimura, a gifted swordsman, during the era of the Tokugawa shogunate. Yoshimura has brought shame on himself by leaving his small town clan after realising he cannot support his family, in order to join the Shinsengumi, a samurai police force that is slowly building a reputation and small army. Seen as a miser and a clown, Yoshimura slowly gains respect due to his loyalty to his clan, and his fresh outlook on life, just as war approaches.

Rarely have I seen a movie shift in quality so much as When the Last Sword is Drawn. After a solid, exciting and intriguing first 70 or so minutes, the tone of the film shifts so drastically for the remainder that it threatens to completely ruin what preceded it. Winding down into a seemingly endless conveyor belt of emotional and highly sentimental scenes, the film quite frankly becomes a bore, and often feels like it's trying to desperately squeeze tears out of you. Although the performances are impressive (especially lead Nakai),the script is so chocked full of clichés that this becomes redundant.

Yet the film as a whole does have much to admire, as it explores themes of loyalty and family, and asks whether you can ever truly know someone. Sairo and Ono both have their sides of the story to tell, and have slightly conflicting memories of Yoshimura. Often his character can betray his own beliefs, creating conflicts within his personality, whether this is to show how memory can betray you, or the complexity of the human character I don't know, but Yoshimura is a fascinating character, and different to the usual brooding samurai. This would have been a very good film had it been shaved by about thirty minutes, or didn't spend so much time on tearful goodbyes and sentimental monologuing, But director Yojiro Takita is intent, and the film sadly doesn't have the scope or the quality to justify its 140+ running time.

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