The Last Samurai.

Oh boy, where to start? I guess the main problem is that I am apparently out of touch with the mainstream movie-going public. For I am hearing a lot of positive reviews about this ridiculous movie.

I witnessed this debacle at a nearly sold-out Century City theater. After arriving late (don’t ask), I was forced to sit in the very front row, so you could say I was in the perfect position to “thoroughly examine” this piece of…work. Okay, okay, it really wasn’t all THAT bad. It was kind of like “Gladiator”, in that despite the corny storyline, the movie presented some very well-shot visuals. The costume designer and art director did fantastic jobs of re-creating late 1800’s Japan, and I was actually thrilled by the detail of the samurai armor and fighting implements.

So much for the good stuff.

The rest of the movie, unimportant stuff like plot and character development and PLAUSIBILITY, well…just like “Gladiator”, it fooled a lot of people. Look, I don’t care HOW much time Tom Cruise spends taking daily samurai lessons, there’s NO WAY that he’ll learn enough to suddenly become the best warrior in Japan. I think, truthfully, Uma Thurman could kick his ass. In the battle of Anglo-turned-wannabe-samurai-sword-swingers, Uma showed MUCH more swordplay skill in “Kill Bill”. Not only that, but Uma, channeling Tarantino’s love for martial arts, demonstrated a much more believable respect for the art AND she had a true motive for chopping off heads. Somebody tell me why Tom turned into a blade-wielding maniac, because nothing in “The Last Samurai” clearly explained his motivation.

Nor was the motivation of his adopted samurai village clearly explained. Let me put it like this: if someone invaded your hometown with the intent of killing you and your family, AND they were successful in killing your friends and your brother-in-law, would YOU take their leader captive, force your sister to clean him, feed him, wash his clothes, let him play with your nephews, teach him how to cut off heads, basically trust him like a close friend? OF COURSE NOT.

Or how about this: if someone killed your husband, the man you deeply loved, the father of your children…would YOU clean him, feed him, wash his clothes, let him play with your kids and fall in love with him? GOOD LORD, NO! Well, maybe if he was Tom Cruise…

Somebody explain to me how and WHY the leader of the samurai (the excellent Ken Watanabe) spoke reasonably fluent English. What ever motivated him, who so revered the ways of his people, to learn that crazy language? No one else in his tribe spoke it at all, so how in heck did he learn it? And for what reason? Did he harbor some secret desire to modernize the samurai? Of course, it was too much to expect this issue to be addressed. We want to see some BATTLES!

And we got to see some battles. Two, as a matter of fact. Yes, they were grand spectacles, especially the second one. But don’t go in expecting to see the state of the art, unless you’re okay with the last century’s state of the art. An epic movie is supposed to amaze the audience with realism, and they came pretty close. But they didn’t go far enough for my tastes.

Remember the battle scenes from “Braveheart”? Well, “The Last Samurai” was almost as good. You could see the arrows flying and it really looked like they were hitting and piercing the soldiers. And the hand to hand sword-and-bayonet fighting was pretty good, but they cheated a little with quick cuts and blurry action. But my main problem was with the gunpowder-powered stuff. The significance of this battle was the dichotomy of old school versus new school with regards to the art of war. The Emperor’s army was equipped with the latest in military might, as supplied by the good ‘ol U.S.A. (just in time for Christmas: pro-war sentiment!), while the samurais stood on traditional cut-n-thrust cutlery, with the occasional dirty-trick-involving-fire (those savages!). So when the army cut loose with their shiny new cannons, I was looking forward to seeing the impact of this new technology. But director Ed Zwick chose to go with the tried-and-true “let’s blow up some turf to simulate the impact of a cannonball”, instead of actually showing what would happen when a 75 pound ball o’ lead traveling 300 feet per second hits the ground 20 feet in front of a bunch of people armored only in stiff, but pretty, leather. People, this is the 21st century! We have the special effects to show this stuff!

End of THAT particular rant.

Finally…okay, not finally, but at the end of the battle, when the army gets tired of being hoodwinked by those tricky samurai, they break out their secret weapons: gattling guns (which were not-so-subtly revealed in the second act). The problem is, when they opened fired and killed EVERYONE ON THE BATTLEFIELD, they somehow missed Tom Cruise. Well, actually they hit him several times in beautiful slow motion, but not a single bullet hit a vital organ. He single-handedly survived a machinegun attack! Even his horse was killed, but not our boy Tom. And because of his superhuman ability to take lead, he became, by default, THE LAST SAMURAI! End of movie, roll credits, politely applaud.

Oh, I wish it would have ended that way. But no! There was more crap about Tom taking the sword of the samurai leader to the Emperor, and then returning to the samurai village to demurely smile at his new “wife”. Blech.

So did I make myself clear about this particular travesty of a movie? It was awful. Fun to watch, sure, kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. If this film gathers any Oscar nominations for anything other than design and art direction…and maybe Watanabe’s soulful performance…then I’ll know the fix is in. And I happen to respect Tom Cruise as an actor.

More later…
Paul