Locations/Showings
Featuring Mainstream &
Art House Choices

Forum
Scary Movie 3 was neither scary nor a movie. Discuss this & more.

Reviews
Glorifications & Executions of the latest Movies, DVDs, and television shows.

Flashback Flicks
Krull and other "Lost" Classics get their day in the sun.

Crapmasterpieces
So darn crappy they're hilariously brilliant.

TV Highlights
Boob Tube Playtime!

Calendar
A movie/tv related calendar. Covers openings, DVD release dates, conventions etc.

The Last Samurai

Year Released: 2003
Starring: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Koyuki, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, Tony Goldwyn, Masato Harada, Togo Igawa, Shichinosuke Nakamura
Director: Edward Zwick

Reviewed by Chris Ching

The Last Samurai is one of those movies that has a great beginning and ending but a snoozer of a middle. Oh, but what a beginning and ending.

Tom Cruise plays Maverick... er, Captain Nathan Algren, celebrated hero of the Civil War and Indian Wars. In great Cruisian tradition, Algren is a cocky, charismatic sonofabitch who you just know will learn a life lesson somewhere down the line. Haunted by the carnage of the battlefield, Cruise is enlisted by the Japanese government to train their beleagured army in the ways of modern warfare against the Samurai. Seems the Emperor and his gaggle of corrupt advisors feel the Samurai with their traditional clothing, swords, and steadfastness to such concepts as honor and integrity are a major roadblock to Japan becoming a "civilized" country. Enter Algren, who teaches a beleagured Japanese Army the pleasures of plugging your enemy with a gun.

Whether you think Cruise is a good actor or not, he has unquestionable star power. In the first scenes, it's a joy watching him scare a crowd of civilians with his drunken antics and preparing the Japanese troops. The first act ends with a beautiful and brutal forest battle between the Samuria and Algren's easily defeated regiment. For fans of Akira Kurosawa (who director Edward Zwick obviously is one of) the scene is a treat. Armored Samurai slicing and a dicing in a lush forest setting illuminated by sporadic beams of sunlight through the trees! I don't know dick about Zen, Bushido, or Mr. Miyagi's crane technique, but this is frickin' cinematic enlightenment.

Unfortunately, after Algren is captured by the Samurai and brought to their mountain village, the movie becomes a rehash of Dances with Wolves and pretty much every movie about a guy who encounters an alleged hostile culture only to find said culture altering his life for the better. The similarities to Dances are all over the place: hero is befriended by the noble leader (played by total bad ass Ken Watanabe), hero butts heads with "angry" warrior who soon lets his guard down and accepts him, hero makes children laugh with his western ways, hero bags local girl. None of this is handled in an exciting way either. This and the fact that it rains through most of these dreary scenes made for some extremely antsy moments on my part.

Yet just about when I was entertaining thoughts of hari kari, the movie comes roaring back to life with an epic final battle scene between the Samurai and the Japanese army except this time Cruise is fighting for the 'rai. Try not to get bogged down in the Great White Hope implications, and you will witness a heart rendering battle that ranks right up there with Saving Private Ryan's D-Day Invasion and anything from Braveheart. Despite facing a larger force armed with rifles, howitzers, and early prototype machine guns, Algren and company are by no means outmatched and how they even the odds will be the subject of you and your pals' post movie talk.

The end of The Last Samurai makes good on the promise of it's beginning, but the greatness comes perilously close to the brink along the way.

Rating: (2 out of 4 stars)

Want to discuss this, and other topics, with fellow fans?

Post your thoughts in the SJ Fanboy Forum now!