I think they wasted a good opportunity to show the otakus in the west how a good Japanese movie really looks like. I'm pretty sure many of them think that the Japanese doesn't really know how to make a movie and can't act just because of their shitty live-action adaptations.
When you have films like Twilight Samurai, Seppuku, Sword Of Doom, Seven Samurai and Ran in your fucking cinema history something like Rurouni Kenshin is inexcusable. I think Samurai X has the potential for a really good film, something really awesome and the OVA showed that.
I love twilight Samurai a lot and this was the perfect tone for Rurouni Kenshin.
In Twilight Samurai the characters feel real and that's the reason why you care about Seibei Iguchi when he is in a fight, it had good acting. Even an action movie like Miike's 13 Assassins had better acting in it than Rurouni Kenshin, Kôji Yakusho is a brilliant actor and he was the lead in that movie.