"The Last Samurai" (2003) - Movie Review

Many have a down right aversion towards Tom Cruise. Mainly due to the reason that his chocolate boy outlook does not suit most of the roles or he does not have much of variations in the characters he takes. It is that the predictability of what Cruise is going to do for a sad or exuberant scene have come down very easily. And while it does appear so, it happens with many other long time actors even Pacino or De Niro and Hanks too. With Tom Cruise it gets amplified for some reason (may be due to his jubilant expression in “The Oprah Winfrey Show”). Regardless of that, he has tried out diverse roles and even if not a great acting, his efforts are diligent and can be seen on every film. He did it in “Magnolia” and in “The Last Samurai”, even if it is not a remarkable performance, it is something different, where Cruise mellows down and let Watanabe do the brilliant support he needed.

Director Edward Zwick’s movie cannot miss the comparison with “Dances with Wolves”. Both tell the story of a soldier experiencing the culture which has only been exposed as a blood seeking blind extremists. As Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is sipping his guilt through alcohol, his commanding officer Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn) whom he despises for his unmerciful act during the rampage of Native Americans, receives an offer to train the Japanese soldiers to war against the rebels. He accepts with bitterness and trains sincerely. He wishes death and grabs every opportune moment to put him through it. He asks a soldier to shoot right at him to prove his point of them being not ready to face the battle. Soon the attack happens and Algren is taken captive to the village, a natural beauty and serenity where the Samurai’s reside. Their head Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) wants to learn his enemy. Thus begins the transformation of Algren into abiding the principles and sees the tradition getting muddled by the westernization. And more than that, he sees the same suffering and guilt residing in Katsumoto.

The good factor about the film is that the narration is mostly from Algren which is honest. There is no specification or aspect of which is grabbed upon by this character. He sees the people, the real character inside them. Even though the codes and way of Samurai may be foreign and may even be senseless at times, he is held by the power of the discipline it is been carried upon. He mingles with the people but rarely does he get close. Because he still is an outsider. The play of the dialogues and responses has been done with intelligence and reality. At the time when Algren is about to depart from the village, Katsumoto comes and says, “When we met first, you were enemy” and pauses, does not follow through it and heads back. Everyone mainly Algren understands everything and it does not become cocky but is the underlying blocks of how the character of Katsumoto is built.

The ending might be a sweet addition to satisfy the audience but cleverly ending it as a fiction or a thought of the author Simon Graham (Timothy Spall) who tells the story covers that part. The homage of Akira Kurosawa’s movies is blatant. The long shot of the troops, the landscapes, the mountains and the blossoming flowers are proper addition. Even all this, there is something missing in a good movie. Some where the conviction is lost in the end. The zeal of retaining the tradition is punctuated well enough by Katsumoto but the Emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura) is flimsy and flexed as the film needed to resolve. This compromise leaves the film with Hollywood touch some times we never want to have.