The Last Samurai
Tom Cruise tries hard. In every role he plays, you can almost feel his effort oozing out of every pore. You can imagine him in front of the mirror in his trailer, repeating “I *am* a disillusioned Civil War hero!” over and over. He never relaxes, and that gets tiring. He’s trying so hard *not* to be the instantly-recognizable Hollywood star that he actually is, he doesn’t let us in.
That’s less of a problem with contemporary movies like “Jerry Maguire” or futuristic ones like “Minority Report,” where Cruise’s teeth-grinding intensity can be used to better effect. But he’s wildly miscast in this “epic,” another non-Western story told with a Western white male as its protagonist. I couldn’t stop thinking, whenever he was on screen, “There’s Tom Cruise!” That’s deadly for a historical drama.
Not that this movie doesn’t have other problems. It’s two and a half hours long, and includes (conservatively) 3,613 impalings. It goes through the motions of an epic, with its hero learning the value of honor blah blah blah. But it feels plastic, no matter how beautiful the rural Japan landscapes may be. There’s no beating heart at the core of this story.
One example: we’re often treated to voice-over readings of Capt. Algren’s diaries kept while in Japan, where he talks about how the samurai are “an intriguing people” and some such. Memo to screenwriters: show, not tell.
It’s not a particularly bad movie, and there are some interesting and fun performances from supporting players (Timothy Spall as the translator, and a woefully underused Billy Connolly as Algren’s military colleague). But there isn’t anything all that good about it, either. It’s another product of the Hollywood epic machine, which should have clogged itself up years ago.
But hey, if you love Tom Cruise, go for it. And if you love impalings, this is the Movie of the Year.
Love impalings? Boy do I! Why, in college they called me — oh wait. Never mind.
I was going to say “sword impalings,” but that’s sort of worse, isn’t it? 🙂
Adam, you need to have some type of grading system for the movies that you review. Maybe like they do in figure skating without the French judge. It is hard for me to tell which movie you liked better Timeline or the Last Samurai. Just a thought. Steve
Steve: I definitely liked “Last Samurai” more. It had some beautiful photography, and didn’t make any huge missteps. But I disliked both, truthfully.
is there a movie that you could not be critical of?