The Last Samurai

"A perfect blossom. You could spend your whole life searching for one, and it would not be a wasted life."

STARRING
Tom Cruise
Ken Watanabe
Koyuki

Directed by Edward Zwick, rated R

I expected this to be a good movie. Not great, but good. The critics seemed to enjoy it (although some hated it) and the previews were interesting enough to make me want to see it. Were my expectations met? Spectacularly so.

Tom Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a well-known soldier who fought against the Cherokee during a war in the 1800s (I don’t know a lot about America in this time period, so sorry if that seems vague). Ashamed of his actions in the said war, he spends most of his time getting drunk and wanting revenge on the officer who gave him the order to attack an innocent village. Until one day, he’s hired to go to Japan. A man named Katsumoto, one of the race of warriors know as “samurai”, has started rebelling against the Emperor. Algren is needed to go train the Japanese army to fight against Katsamoto. Everything is fine until he winds up captured by the enemy’s forces. That’s the basic plot, but I won’t give any more away. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.

The story’s one we’ve all seen before: man goes to a foreign country, discovers a new culture, starts to become a hero, yadda yadda yadda. What makes this movie different is how it seems to set itself apart from all other movies with the same basic situation. It has been called “epic” by some, and rightly so. The Return of the King was called “an emotionally charged war movie” by one reviewer. This movie deserves the title even more – or perhaps it should be “an action-packed drama”. The truth is, the film favors neither action nor emotion. Both are present and remarkably conveyed.

The battle scenes are stunning, as is Zwick’s directing. We get rifles, swords, cavalry, cannons – it’s all here, and in no short supply. Some moments are brilliantly shown in slow motion (there is one scene in which the action happens so fast it is shown again, but slowed down) while others so fast you’ll barely have time to realize what happened. There is some blood, but Zwick has managed not to make it gruesome. This is not Braveheart. The result: the viewer becomes absorbed in the battles and is never distracted by the amount of gore. There’s also a large variety of action scenes: some are small, involving only a few combatants while others (such as the final battle) are grand and magnificent struggles between thousands.

The acting is superb. Pretty Boy Tom Cruise has such a well-known face that it’s really hard for the audience to accept his character. In many of his movies you just can’t look at him without thinking, “Look. It’s Tom Cruise.” Thankfully, his performance in The Last Samurai is so good (some say he deserves an Oscar nomination) that this problem is avoided for the most part. Sometimes during the movie I would switch back and forth between, “I’m watching Tom Cruise” and, “I’m watching Nathan Algren”, but for the most part Cruise was excellent. Ken Watanabe also is incredible as Katsamoto (though I think a few of his lines could have been said better) considering that English is not his first language – there are also rumors that he’ll be nominated for an Academy Award as well. The other key actor is a Japanese actress named Koyuki, who plays Taka. After Algren kills her character’s husband in the beginning of the movie, she does an amazing job at portraying feelings of anger, sadness, hope, and affection for her brother’s killer. She has very few lines, and the true power of her performance relies on her facial expressions and body movement.

Despite of all the great acting, my favorite character was Bob the Samurai. There were several times where I wanted to shout, “Go Bob! Go!” But that’s all I have to say about that.

One of the key elements in the movie is the love story between Algren and Taka. I was skeptical at how it would be handled. He just killed her husband, and now magically she’s just going to forget about it and love him? Thankfully, the script is so good that this problem is handled perfectly. We learn that she does not strongly grieve for her husband, because he died with honor. Also, things never go very far between her and Algren (there is only one brief kiss). If there had been, it would have been very out of place and out of character for both of them. The most intimate moment between them is when she helps Algren put on a suit of samurai armor. This is quite possibly one of the most touching love scenes I have ever seen in a film, and it proves that true love does not equal sex, as some movies seem to imply.

The film brings up some powerful issues, mainly about honor and loyalty. If I could sum up the message of this movie in one sentence, it would be: finding peace. Algren is a broken and bitter man who suddenly finds something that he can truly believe in and that will give his life meaning. This is something I believe everyone must do if they ever want to find true happiness.

This film is only rated R due to its violence. There is very little profanity, and no gratuitous sex. In other words: not much to prevent you from seeing it. And see it they should. Though every once in a while you might come across a small flaw (eg. Near the beginning some of the shots last too long, and Cruise’s last spoken line is incredibly corny), that should not prevent you from enjoying this magnificent piece of cinema. It fully deserves a 9/10.

Note – in comparison to Lord of the Rings: Some people think this movie is better than Return of the King, but I would have to disagree. Yes, this film is excellent, but so is ROTK. Also, although both are epics, ROTK is just plain bigger and deserves recognition simply because it was harder to do - not to mention the fact that the first two movies were snubbed at the Oscars. This movie is not as good as Lord of the Rings (especially if you take the trilogy as a whole) but it is still excellent, and one of the best of the year. Although ROTK deserves to win Best Picture, this one should at least be nominated.

Bottom Line: Great action. Great emotion. Great script. Great everything.

Should I see it? Unless for some strange reason you think Tom Cruise is the devil incarnate, then yes.