In The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise plays a Civil War hero, Nathan Algren who, haunted by the atrocities he's committed in the Indian wars, is reduced to hawking Winchester rifles while depending on drink to deaden his self-loathing. Along comes a job he can't refuse, and so he goes to Japan, not to find himself, but (like some of us I suspect) to lose himself.
Algren is captured by Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), the leader of the last band of samurai holding out on the Meiji revolution. Disappointed to find himself alive, Algren tries again to find solace in drink. That denied, he settles for having the shit repeatedly beat out of him. His captors mistake his desire to die for true grit. Eventually detox takes hold and he climbs out of the dark hole of himself. What he discovers is a picturesque mountain village where everyone studies his craft with single-minded discipline, soldiering without shame. He has to know how they do it. If he can stop hating what he does, he can stop hating who he is. He takes to it like an alcoholic to religion.
Ken Watanabe is the best thing in the movie, a commanding presence, completely confident. His Katsumoto is self-assured and at peace with himself. He is the star of the movie and the movie would have been better if it had ended focused on him and not on Cruise. Algren sides with Katsumoto, not out of any political beliefs, but because he recognizes what he wants for himself, a man who knows who he is and is comfortable with his place in the world. The fact that Katsumoto's place in the world has just been made redundant is what gives the movie an excuse for its lavish battle scenes.
The battle and fight scenes are well-staged. Although there is an obvious choreography, it's more Errol Flynn than Matrix. The final battle in bright sunlight is also a relief after the dingy grays of all those recent CGI battles. I was confused about the level of violence, though. In early battle scenes, it looked pretty PG and bloodless. By the end, it's definitely a gushing red R. Maybe they ran out of blood money. I could go with either style; I just want consistency.
I was surprised to be so entertained overall. Yes, there are many embarrasingly bad moments. The two scenes after the great battle should never have been included. There is no way to defend them and these scenes destroy whatever case one tries to build for this being a personal not historical drama. And when one starts picking at the historical aspects, The Last Samurai falls apart. The more one knows about Japan, the more one is likely to cringe.
If you can get past the cringing (JQS and I could barely contain our MST-style commentary), it's got some good points. The fight scenes are gloriously executed with an old-fashioned romantic flair. It flirts with a dopey love scene, but never consumates it (big sigh of relief). Tom Cruise loses his trademark boyish smirk. Playing someone who no longer knows it all provides him a bit of dimension. If there is one reason to see this movie, though, it's Ken Watanabe. I didn't recognize him as the young Gun from Tampopo. His physical bearing completely overshadows everyone else. He can be fierce or funny, and kept reminding me of Yul Brynner in The King and I. (Could just be the hair). Without Watanabe, the movie would be completely tiresome. But with him, it's a lot of fun. Shin Koyamada was also very watchable as Katsumoto's son and Japan's own bow-wielding Legolas.
On a language note, I'm glad that most of the Japanese characters spoke in Japanese. It's encouraging to have a subtitled movie open number 1 at the US box office. Maybe we'll get more.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
December 13, 2003
Comments
As Minority Report was the first Tom Cruise movie I was able to stomach, and whereas that went right out the window with Mission Impossible, this review provides just the spark I needed to get me to see, what, given the subject matter, held some promise. Great review.
Comment by: jbl. Posted December 18, 2003 09:42 AM.
Well, I hope I haven't set expectations too high. Remember I also mentioned "cringing" and "embarrassingly bad moments" and "historically indefensible".
Comment by: mss. Posted December 18, 2003 03:17 PM.
Since that I'm not really a big fan on Tom Cruise I didn't really think that this movie was gonna be good.I didn't think that Tom was going to be any good either. So I was like "what's the point on going"? Well I watched it in my spare time and I thought that the movie was amazing. It was like a history class but much better I got to learn some things and believe in what the movie was trying to say. What surprised me the most was that Tom wasn't really that bad in the movie....like his acting was really good and it didn't ruin the movie for the rest of us. So over all I thought this movie was great!
Comment by: Joanna. Posted December 22, 2003 02:11 PM.
Hey, I thought that the movie wasn't too bad too. I was prepared to cringe a lot, but I didn't really do it too much. I found the ending a little bit pat though. I thought that the scene with the Emperor was necessary, especially for Americans who need a little bit of explanation about the point of the whole endeavor, and for those who couldn't deal with the idea of the whole enterprise coming to completely naught. The last last scene in the village was totally unnecessary, though I am willing to accept it in trade for all cheeseball romance story we didn't have to see, although I was hoping we could get away clean. There were some little bits that made me want to cringe, but I tried to view it as a fairytale legend about a possible Japan, and figured that if they're going to get it wrong, they may as well do it in a nice way.
Comment by: Donkeymon. Posted January 13, 2004 02:10 AM.
I'm actually looking forward to seeing it again when it's out on DVD. The thing that bothered me most about the last scene, is that what's-her-name is hoeing a plot like a farmer. Isn't she a samurai? One hardly expect, in an Arthurian film for example, to return to the Dukedom and find the Duchess cleaning stables.
Comment by: mss. Posted January 13, 2004 08:37 AM.
Well, she's not really a samurai anymore, is she? I guess she has to earn a living just like everyone else now. Especially with two kids and a dead husband.
Comment by: donkeymon. Posted January 26, 2004 08:20 AM.
Wives of Samurai had to work just like everyone else. Their husbands' identities didn't make them special. You have to realize that the place of women in Japanese society is NOT the same as in European ones. Her husband was a warrior, and she took care of the house. That included tending the vegetable garden.
Comment by: Mika. Posted February 22, 2004 07:32 AM.
I have a question (I suppose you know japanese language). Before the last battle - the little boy gave Tom Cruise a sheet of paper with a writing on it. What was written on it? because it wasn't translated in the movie.
Comment by: wojto. Posted February 25, 2004 06:36 AM.
A couple years late...the writing on the paper was kanji for "Samurai".
* It's never too late for a comment. --mss
Comment by: David Austin. Posted December 9, 2006 11:31 PM.
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"The Last Samurai is a summer movie that has the misfortune of being released during Oscar buzz season." -- JQS