Hirokin: The Last Samurai (2012)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

On a distant planet the human overlords are slowly wiping out the indigenous species known as Arids in order to take the planet's raw materials. If it sounds like "Avatar", wait. Griffin (Julian Sands) is the evil human viceroy over the planet which he runs like the Roman Empire.Moss (Angus Macfadyen )is a rebel that Griffin is hunting and wants to kill. Through a series of events a human named Hirokin (Wes Bentley) winds up in Moss' s camp. Moss knows the old "Way" which is like an oriental earth religion, plus martial arts. He instructs Hirokin in "The Way" so he can unite the tribes and defeat the humans. "The Way" also allows one to see the outcome of their decision before it happens.The humans have great advances like hover crafts, but fight with swords and spears. It is difficult to tell humans from Arids except by the lines on their hands. They can interbreed, but unfortunately the genocide has caused most of the Arid women to become barren.To add to the mix there are some woman/breeding/jealousy issues between Griffin, Hirokin, Griffin's barren girlfriend Orange(Jessica Szohr) Hirokin's fertile wife Terra (Mercedes Manning) and Moss's daughter Maren (Laura Ramsey).The acting and dialogue was fairly bad. They could have interjected some humor from time to time...like "These 2 Arids walk into a bar for the first time and say, "I'll have the usual..."No f-bombs, sex, nudity. Rape? Woman showers with her clothes on. PG sex talk "submit"

I once saw a movie that was worse than this. once. This movie is a horrible amalgamation of Star Wars, The Last Samurai and Gladiator. In the film our hero Hirokin and his wife get captured by an evil overlord named Phoenix. Somehow or another, Hirokin escapes and wanders off into the desert. He meets a fat, balding, Yoda-like guy who teaches him "the way" which is like the force but not really. after He's learned "the way" he "unites the tribes" which turn out to be like 30 people in total. Then he goes back and fights the evil Phoenix in a ring of guards, he kills Phoenix but is mortally wounded himself and dies.In this basic recycled plot, the writer/director sprinkles in some other things that have no baring on the story and end up not being important. for example, a hovercraft that looks like Jabba's barge; An implied love triangle involving Yoda's daughter; two Irish idiots for comic relief and a half hour of Discovery Chanel nature shots. There are blatant ripoffs throughout the movie. The Irish idiots are lifted from Hidden Fortress; They took Jedi robes and gave them unhemmed edges; the ending is from Gladiator, complete with a grassy field vision and to top it all off, a Black Obi Wan Kenobi that had nothing to do with the plot. You could make a drinking game where everyone has to do a shot for every ripped off element. everyone would be too drunk by the end to even notice the gladiator ending.half the budget for set design seems to have been blown on one spiky death machine. One can deduce that from the three shots it's unnecessarily placed in, and also the fact that 90% of the movie takes place in tents. The acting is horrible, The handful of real actors in it appear to not take their rolls seriously (and for good reason) and deliver "non-performances". The editing was amateurish at best, shots were carried too long and dialog scenes were sloppy. I've seen better editing in YouTube videos. The soundtrack was generic, ambient, crap. Overall this movie had no redeeming features whatsoever. there was no single component piece to it that was even passable. whoever told "Alejo Mo-Sun" (writer/director/producer) that he has an ounce of talent in film making should be shot. His mother should be sued for encouraging him to follow his dreams.

Badly directed with even worse editing this story had a lot of potential. Fails miserably as entertainment, screen play and dialogue are even worse than the directing and editing. Production quality is almost there and the acting looks like it was all first takes with little rehearsal. I also saw bits from other movies, Gladiator, Star Wars a little of Dune. Plenty of good looking sorts in it, but even they can't save this festering mess. It would not have taken too much to have turned this into blockbuster, get Joss Weadon in to rewrite the screenplay and direct. Pay the actors a little more and give them some time to rehears.

I must say that Sci-Fi B movies is not all in the toe crunching class. But this movie is really terrible; I know that the budget was low but come-on! If you can't make a decent CGI in the year 2011 don't even attempt to do it. In the 80'ties there were a lot of movies in the "atomic wasteland Mad Max" category, this one will fit nicely in the row of movies that failed to get past the firing ramp. I watched the movie in 1080p and it didn't help much, so if you love Sci-Fi B movies you can give it a try on day, if nothing else come to your mind.The scenery was great, and the fighting scenes were "sort of" OK, but everything else didn't deliver the silver screen magic at all. If you decide to watch this one don't expect anything, then you wont be disappointed.