You seen Shiguri: Death Frenzy? It's an anime series about a lord who's gone mad and wants to have a tournament where people fight to the death. But that's not really what the series is focused on. Instead, it's the history behind the rivalry between a blind ronin and a one-armed samurai, who have made their way to the tournament with the intention of killing each other. The series shifts into a flashback to their younger days as students before their injuries.

It's one of the most unapologetic depictions of the samurai I've ever seen or even heard of. The series depicts them as little more than thugs who terrorize peasants while trying to LARP the days of the Sengoku Period.

Be warned, it's a slow burn and the anime was never finished. The manga has no official translation in English (though it does for a few other languages if you're multilingual). Fan translations exist, but they can be inaccurate or unprofessional/messy (typos, grammar, etc.).

he was leading a reactionary insurrection against a land reform program.

I want to watch this movie so bad. There's a certain romantic futility to the fuedal landlord class fighting against the rise of industrial capital, but in my ideal movie I would make it clear that everybody involved sucks by centering a former peasant who is abused by the samurai as a young man and then has to get a job in a factory which is somehow worse and then gets drafted into the army and just has a miserable time throughout the entire thing.

It's been ages since I saw this, but I love Ken Watanabe so I can't hate it too much. The politics and Tom Cruise character (because dumb Amerikkkans won't watch movie about Japan without whitey) is obviously cringe.

Apparently this movie is looked on kind of fondly in Japan, despite the Hollywood-style historical inaccuracy.

a lot of the social issue kinda problems with american media don't impact foreign audiences so they aren't harmed the way minoritized people are over here.

I loved it when I was a teen

Yeah me too. It has problems but not nearly as many as Dances With Wolves.

She develops an uncomfortable fondness for Algren after her brother (Ken Watanabe's character, Katsumodo) makes her look after him as her nephew (Katsumodo's son) stays at her house. Katsumodo himself lives in the temple. Early on in the film, she asks Katsumodo why he's making her suffer and wants to kill herself. His reasoning is he is hoping Algren will lower his guard around her and tells her she needs to do as she's told (women are property who are passed to the nearest male relative etc. etc. and so on).

They never kiss or anything. He accidentally comes across her leaving a hotspring and in the final act of the film she helps him put on her husband's armor. She hugs him as he's developed a fondness for her kids, who's father they know he killed.

Katsumodo is of course exploiting his own family so he can make Algren feel guilty and Algren falls for it. I think Katsumodo's sister understands what her brother is doing, but also understands its incredibly cruel and asking too much from her.

Bullshido mode

Yeah that's a very uncomfortable subplot of the film.

at the end when the white guy somehow saves the emperor and the samurai from the emperors’s evil assistant

This doesn't happen. The Samurai all die, that's the point. Tom Cruise doesn't save anything.

The Emperor's role is that he's a puppet of a pro-western faction, but only after the Samurai and his friend Ken Watanabe are defeated does he decide to change course to protect local culture and tradition.

It's definitely one of my guilty pleasures. It avoids a lot of common white savior tropes while still managing to fall into a bunch. I think it was helped by having a lot of input from the Japanese cast and crew. A lot of the extras, for example, were people who do medieval reenactments in Japan and showed up in their own armor.

and then what happened?

everyone clapped obviously

I sample it and go like this:

RIP OP

I get confused seeing stuff like this because I didn't realize Tom Cruise was in Fallout and keep wondering if he was one of the robots or a dog or a ghoul or something. Then I remember there's a MI: Fallout.