Month: December 2003

I’d heard noth­ing but bad about The Last Samu­rai. I saw it last night and was enter­tained. What brought it down the most was Tom Cruise. The direc­tor, one Mr. Zwick, end­ed up putting a bit too much empha­sis on Cruise, in nar­ra­tion, diegetic dia­logue, and pho­to-mon­tage. I got the dis­tinct impres­sion that the movie was main­ly filmed as anoth­er chance for Tom Cruise to play dress-up and over­come his own per­son­al demons on the way to con­quer­ing some real life bad­dies. [just like Top Gun, Far and Away, Minor­i­ty Report, etc.]

The bat­tle sequences were sweet, although the final bat­tle was­n’t quit as epic as it was bor­ing. I can only watch peo­ple get mowed down by muz­zle-load­ers, Gatling guns, and how­itzers for so long before I start to yawn. I was most impressed with the per­for­mances by the actu­al Japan­ese who played samu­rai. Cruise did a poor job fak­ing an under­stand­ing of the Japan­ese world­view. In typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood fash­ion, every­thing was a dichoto­my. This does­n’t work too well when cast into an Asian set­ting. The clash between incom­ing West­ern cul­ture and tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese way of life does not real­ly come through. Of course, you can see it por­trayed but I don’t buy it. Tokyo is mod­ern­ized but the vil­lage Cruise fights for look com­plete­ly unchanged.
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