Movie Review | 'The Last Samurai': From the Wild West to the Honorable East
December 5, 2003
By ELVIS MITCHELL
There is probably no director more obsessed with the
complexity of patriotism - an unusual subject to plumb in
mainstream films - than Edward Zwick, who is driven to
question the imperatives of an America that his
protagonists both love and detest. His latest movie, "The
Last Samurai," falls squarely into the realm of the
previous Zwick bedeviled-hero films, "Glory," "Courage
Under Fire" and "The Siege."
And I do mean squarely. "Samurai" is a mythic western that
combines a fish-out-of-water theme with an immersion in
Japanese culture: John Ford's "Lost in Translation." It
depicts phalanxes of troops moving with deliberate,
terrifying fervor across the very wide screen.
And this time Tom Cruise, the can-do idol of millions, uses
his polished-chrome smile mirthlessly. At least for the
first hour, his grin looks like a faded tattoo. The uneven
"Samurai" is a can-do movie that's far more effective at
communicating emotion in bigger scenes than in more
intimate ones.
Mr. Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a burned-out former Army
officer and Indian fighter. Having survived Custer's Last
Stand in 1876, he is now a commercial sideshow prop,
demonstrating the newest Winchester rifle. As Algren
lumbers through the clich�s he's hired to recite before
blasting away at targets - though the whiskey oozing from
his pores probably makes him more of a danger than the
weapon - a sudden ember of regret flames in this
ex-soldier's eyes. He goes off the script, reciting the
horrors of a campaign in which he and his troops
slaughtered innocents.
Algren looks so wasted and beleaguered that the biggest
question is not whether he'll wing an audience member with
a stray shot, but whether he can bear up under the dense,
cast-iron plot. After being bounced by the Winchester
folks, Algren is hired by his former commander, Colonel
Bagley (Tony Goldwyn, playing a salamanderlike ancestor of
all the sleazy characters he's ever portrayed). Bagley
wants Algren to travel with him to Tokyo and train Japanese
soldiers in the use of American tactics and rifles. The
Meiji emperor is ready to accept the ways of the West; he's
actually being pressured to by American business interests.
Once in Japan, Algren is forced to send his nervous,
underprepared imperial troops into battle too soon against
an enemy of the emperor, the samurai Katsumoto (Ken
Watanabe). Despite the imperial army's modern weapons,
Katsumoto and his men sweep in with ferocity and wield
their arms of the past - swords and spears - with lethal
effectiveness. The cinematographer, John Toll, films their
arrival through a thick fog in a forest, as if Katsumoto's
men were ghosts from the recent past out to rob Algren's
troops of their backbones - and their lives.
In their ritual armor, Katsumoto's men make quick work of
their foes; there's tragicomic relief as Algren's
conscripted farmers tremble while trying to load their
guns. When a wounded Algren kills Katsumoto's second in
command, he's captured by the invaders and, even more
bewildering, cared for by Katsumoto's sister, Taka
(Koyuki), the widow of the man Algren murdered.
It's a complicated story, and Mr. Zwick is complicated,
too: he loves arrogance slapped out of its self-regard.
Algren is full of himself, even though he's conceived as a
man who was second tenor to a legend; he knew and despised
Custer. Looking fashionably distressed, with slightly
puffy, red-rimmed eyes that at the very least suggest that
he's survived a grueling press junket, Mr. Cruise has a
worn cockiness. His aw-shucks virility is a little wilted,
if not mildewed, around the edges: a kind of reverse
narcissism, since Algren is proud of his dissolution
(though Mr. Cruise's good-boy posture works for a man
reared under the disciplinary rigors of the military).
Although at times Mr. Cruise comes off as too contemporary
for the 19th century - at one point, he seems to be waiting
for a cellphone call to confirm his terms for a cover of
Details magazine - this displacement fits better when he
becomes a prisoner. Algren appears to be reacting to this
strange new world through sounds; nothing he's hearing
makes any sense to him. He's a mangy gaijin that Edgar Rice
Burroughs might have invented, though James Clavell got
there eventually.
The film includes notable performances by actors not
drafted to shoulder the burden of the entire production.
Billy Connolly, emanating a gamy, sly menace that he's
rarely suggested before, plays Algren's former sergeant at
arms, Zebulon Gant. Gant, used to propping up his old
friend and superior officer, joins Algren in the journey to
Japan. Mr. Connolly's loose, hostile vivacity registers so
clearly that it's obvious we won't be seeing very much of
him. But this is crackling, rigorous comic work; he doesn't
have to present the face of tragedy.
The far more weighted and daring acting comes from Mr.
Watanabe, as Katsumoto. Probably best known outside of
Japan as the reedy, restless sidekick in the gourmand
classic "Tampopo," Mr. Watanabe has filled out physically
and spiritually. The formality he brings to Katsumoto is
hard-won, especially when he's having pointedly thoughtful
conversations with Algren that sound more like translations
of ideograms than actual dialogue.
The film never really explains how or why this resolute,
isolated samurai learned to speak English better than the
emperor. His fluency doesn't quite make sense, though it
gives the movie some needed mystique. It plays better than
the inexorable pull of romance, drawing Taka and Algren
together.
"The Last Samurai," which Mr. Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz
wrote with John Logan, from a story by Mr. Logan,
super-glues together a host of contradictions.
Unfortunately, as dramatized, they function as conventions
that are older than the story the film is weaving. The
movie, which opens nationwide today, is most watchable
during the majestic brutality of the battle sequences. This
is not only because of the handsome staging, but also
because the keywords sacrifice and honor are evoked with
verve and simplicity, more so than in the "exchange of
idea" chats between Algren and Katsumoto, which sound like
statements being read into the Congressional Record by
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Mr. Zwick has absorbed the lethal agility of Akira
Kurosawa; what registers just as powerfully as the sureness
of the combatants is the ugly futility of the battles
themselves. When the film sets up the lessons that Algren
has to learn, the hero is not really a fish out of water;
he's more like a big fish in a dry pond, picking up a
lesson in Eastern deportment and philosophy a step away
from the "wax-on, wax-off" curriculum of "The Karate Kid."
In those scenes presaging his Eastern conversion, Algren
can't suppress his eagerness to learn, picking up the ways
of the sword and the Samurai code of Bushido with an
alacrity that's mandated for movie stars: flash-card
education.
The film's title evokes James Fenimore Cooper, though he
had enough perspective not to make a white man "the last"
in his novel. Even though "The Last Samurai" opts for
Japan's cultural differences, all of the unmentioned
hardships of a feudal society notwithstanding, the
remaining honorable native here is an American. Is that a
veiled way of saying that Japan's old ways were doomed
after all?
"The Last Samurai" is rated R (Under 17 requires
accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has violence,
including enough ritualistic bloodletting for a week on the
History Channel; alcohol use; strong language; and a chaste
hint of sexuality.
THE LAST SAMURAI
Directed by Edward Zwick; written by John Logan, Marshall
Herskovitz and Mr. Zwick, based on a story by Mr. Logan;
director of photography, John Toll; edited by Steven
Rosenblum and Victor du Bois; music by Hans Zimmer;
production designer, Lilly Kilvert; produced by Mr. Zwick,
Mr. Herskovitz, Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Scott Kroopf and
Tom Engelman; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running
time: 144 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Tom Cruise (Nathan Algren), Timothy Spall (Simon
Graham), Ken Watanabe (Katsumoto), Billy Connolly (Zebulon
Gant), Tony Goldwyn (Colonel Bagley), Hiroyuki Sanada
(Ujio) and Koyuki (Taka).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/movies/05SAMU.html?
ex=1071640979&ei=1&en=4e27ec713b86aa93