I have always loved Japanese movies and have been fascinated by that culture since Shogun. I liked Last Samauri as well.
The story takes place several hundred years ago and involves a halfbreed guy who is not a samurai and is therefore treated about as well as navel lint by the ruling class. He has had the misfortune(?) to fall in love with the local princess, Mika (Ko Shibasaki). Her dad runs the province of Ako as a Daimyo, under the rule of the Shogun.
One of the interesting aspects of the movie is the fantasy side of it. I don't mean like a Britney Spears/Miley Cyrus fantasy, but rather a magic, sword and sorcery thing. For instance, there is a fox that appears as a sort of bad omen. It is white and has one eye that is purple and the other eye is amber. (Don't foxes have optometrists?) Kai (Keanu Reeves) sees that this fox is a witch and has been sent to destroy the ruling family so that a rival daimyo, Lord Kira, can take over the province.
Kai himself has a magic gift. He was an abandoned child that was left in a weird forest of spirits. As such, he has powers. He kills a freakish beast, a huge creature that has never seen the light of day in the real world. Then he steps in to save the honor of the province when its fighting champion is killed just before a fight. (Witch related trouble again.) He dons armor which conceals his identity. As a non-samauri and member of a navel-lint race he could not represent the ruling class, of course.
The main plot of the movie is the fact that when Kai's master falls into disgrace, his soldiers go from samurai to Ronin (navel lint with swords). They seek revenge for the plot that took their master's life. To achieve this revenge they must overcome a witch who can shape-shift from fox to foxy femme fatale and even into a serpent. She can also 'flow' around like a liquid garment and makes the uninitiated marvel at the skills of computer generated special effects. Hey, she keeps the same eyeballs when she role-plays as a hot woman, too. She should have known that this would be a dead giveaway that she was A) related to a fox, B) a witch with so much ego that she wanted to be known as a shape shifter. Either way it gives one that bizarre feeling of "This woman scares the crapola out of me... and I like it". Sort of like some of those James Bond women.
This show is well-directed by Carl Rinsch and I think you'd like it. Check it out, if you want to.
P.S. I came home and watched The Wolverine DVD and I heard steel ringing in my sleep that night.
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