The samurai live by a code of honor. Now they must also die for it. But they're not alone in their strugle against the forces that would forever change them. Tom Cruise plays Civil War hero Capt. Nathan Alfren, who comes to Japan to fight the Samurai and ends up pledging himself to their cause. Ken Watanabe (Academy Award nominee) plays Katsumoto, a Samurai leader facing a vanishing way of life, whose destiny becomes interrwined with that of the American captain, Edward Zwick direct this sweeping and emotional epic tale of the birth of modern Japan.