The Last Samurai

Sometimes films come along that fall between my ratings categories. In this case, my inkling is to give the film a 3.25. It's certainly slickly produced and very well acted, with scenes that alternate between deeply moving and thrilling. This is usually good enough to merit a 3.5 in my book, however, it falls short of a true 3.5 by not giving us enough to hang the scenes on. There's an interesting story line -- Tom Cruise plays a deadbeat American Army officer hired by the Japanese to train their troops to fight the samurai, but is captured by the samurai and learns their way of life -- and while it's affecting on several levels (the destruction of the samurai, how a foreigner views a radically different culture) it seems to have been made to showcase some brilliant battle scenes. The best way to describe this is that the film has no soul, and for a film about the samurai way of life, with its philosophy of honor, that's a grave error. I was impressed, as many were, by Ken Watanabe who brilliantly understates his role as the samurai leader, and it's possible that this rubbed off on Cruise, not known for understating anything. Here he did a good job of not making his character a passionate convert, which would never have fit with the cynical, bitter man who first came to Japan. So, I give the film the higher mark if only to recommend it to those interested in the subject matter who might otherwise discount it.

year: 2003
length: 154 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325710/combined