The Last Samurai

Starring: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, Koyuki,
UK Certificate: 18

Tom Cruise. In samurai armour. With a bloody great sword. Screaming into battle alongside hundreds of Japanese warriors. Even in a year well-endowed with overblown epics and sword-slashing swashbucklers, there was something ludicrously spine-tingly about the trailer for Mr Cruise's latest, which accompanied The Matrix Revolutions last month and out-tingled it by some measure.
Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a disgraced US Civil War veteran packed off to train the Japanese army in modern warfare techniques so they can battle an uprising by feudal samurai warlords. But once there - surprise! - he falls in love with the dying lifestyle of the samurais and ends up fighting for rather than against them. What are the chances, eh?
Cameos from Billy Connolly and Cruise favourite Timothy Spall (who also cropped up in Vanilla Sky) colour up the background, but it's the sight of Cruise hacking and slashing into battle that'll make the movie bellow into life. Banzai!