OK, so this article is way late, and Kevie never finished his part of it because he fell asleep.  But here goes.

MIKE'S REVIEW:

OK, so basically, there were no computers in this movie.  I mean, the entire MOVIE takes place in Japan.  I thought Japan was supposed to like have all kinds of Internet access and stuff.  Didn't they like make Nintendo and all that cool stuff I was restricted from as a kid?  Didn't they like invent the Internet with Al Gore or something?  Aren't they all running IPv6 over there?  Isn't every newborn child issued an army of digimon toys and an Internet-enabled robo-pup over there?  I mean geez.  Very unrealistically low-tech representation of Japan in my opinion.

Overall, it was one and a half hours of my life I should have spent playing Warcraft or drinking Mountain Dew.  I give it three frowny faces, a smily face, and an indifferent sneer.

JORDAN'S REVIEW:

Okay, Mike is an idiot.  There was no internet then.  But there were guns, so I don't know what the deal was with Katsumoto hating guns.  There were guns like centuries before that in Japan, and samurai made use of them as well.  Well, okay, the samurai's common soldiers used them, and the samurai never personally used them and the government eventually threw out the white traders who gave Japan guns, for fear that Western influences would destroy their culture and stuff.

Which brings me to my next point - the movie's major theme: Westernization is bad, white people are evil, except for heartbroken, inwardly shattered warrior types searching for honor and a reason to go on.  You can tell that Tom Cruise is that sort, because of his continually held facial expression of mixed stonefaced stoicism and barely restrained battle rage.  Also, he can kill a samurai, an inheritor of possibly the finest school of war ever devised, or at least until it's time for him to develop character, after which he can barely hold his own against a small child.  This signals that it's time for him to wholeheartedly adopt Japanese culture and become a warrior supreme - in roughly two minutes - in a school of combat that usually takes years to even begin to think about becoming skilled.

But the fight scenes were cool, and there were ninja and samurai and swords and guns and honor and courage and death and stuff.  That's really all I wanted to watch, so I guess I can forgive yet another wholesale Hollywood assault on my own personal ethnic history and culture.  America's historical dignity can go down the pot, so long as I get to watch violence yoked for heroic purposes.

KEVIN'S REVIEW

Mike: OK Kevin went to sleep before he could write his review.  He was actually pretty impressed with it being all historical and stuff.  Was mad that the dude took a boat to Japan and not a submarine.  Other than that, he was pretty impressed with the movie after the initial "Why is Tom Cruise the Last Samurai" stuff.  Oh and the Asian chick he said was hot.