Between Keanu and Tom Cruise

I totally agree with you. In Last Samurai everything, but everything, is made to serve Tom Cruise's inflated ego. He gets the dramatic wounds and recovery, he gets all the big scenes of 'superior white guy absorbs quaint foreign culture and teaches the simple natives their own art of war', he supplants the daimyo's own hatamoto, he survives the battle and the slaughter by the magic forcefield of American nationality, he gets to advise the Emperor and he gets the girl. The excellent Japanese actors all around him are just there to service all this.

In 47 Ronin, silly though it is, Reeves's character is quite low-status throughout. OK he's a super-powers fighter, but there is an almost-believable reason for this, his upbringing with the oni in the forest. And he's not on the screen the whole time. Hiroyuki Sanada, an actor who can wipe the floor with both Reeves and Cruise, is allowed enough screen time to carry the film; which given the subject matter, absurdly fantasised though it is, is how it should be.

completely agreed. I also think people behind the making of this movie were probably aware of this

I dub this most accurate thread on the board.

Last Samurai is one of the greatest films of all time. If Keanu were in it, it would have been horrible.

In that movie Tom Cruise's character IS an American. Keanu Reeves is born and brought up in that land.

Couldn't care less about the actors. As long as they aren't annoying then I don't care, and I didn't think either were.
The characters however, are very important. One was well developed and had good dialogue, the other was a one-dimensional silent type who only had one emotion. Got nothing to do with the actors.
The point is, The Last Samurai is a good movie with a good lead character, despite how idiotic the actor is. 47 Ronin is a stupid movie with a one-dimensional lead character that barely speaks, has no emotion, awful dialogue and inexplicable magic powers. That and he's also a half-English, half-Japanese man that talks with an American accent.

47 Ronin did something that both surprised and impressed me and that was seamlessly merging Keanu Reeves into an all Japanese movie. The script was perfectly suited to this, him being a half breed (which actually could be plausible with Keanu), the perfect casting of young Keanu was to me the best casting i've ever seen in regard to casting a child version of an actor....as well as the way Keanu speaks suiting this role perfectly.
Tom Cruise in Last Samurai still impressed me, i've always liked Cruises ability to take risks with scripts although he doesn't take too much risk with his acting style, the movie still worked well. I think the difference is that 47 Ronin blended Keanu into the movie whereas The Last Samurai blended the movie into Tom Cruise. 47 Ronin was a lot harder task to pull off.

I believe Tom Cruise's character in The Last Samurai was always meant to be an American in dress up...when he survives at the end he wears his old US military uniform, he doesn't commit 'seppuku' like a true samurai would etc.

Anyway, like it or not The Last Samurai introduced a whole ton of good Japanese actors who went on to star in a lot of Western films to my pleasant surprise (OK only 2 that I know of but still).