Lavish, expensive Samurai picture with a B-movie script and a miscast Cruise.

Rating: Null/10 (7 May 2004)

It's amazing how much this film resembles one of those low-budget actioners about a Westerner going to the Orient and becoming a big hero. We're talking "Action Cinemax" here, except that you have a multi-million dollar budget and Tom Cruise in the lead. The picture is visually lush, although the CGI is very evident (unlike in, say, a movie like MASTER AND COMMANDER, where it's all but invisible). As for Cruise, he's unconvincing as an alcoholic, world-weary American soldier, a role more suited to someone like Nick Nolte than a boyish, fresh face like Tom. Everything is just as you expect it here, so there are no surprises of any kind, except that we don't, and quite surprisingly I might add, get a sex scene for Tom and his Japanese sex interest. A drag, if you ask me. It's not unenjoyable because there are big battles that are terrific to watch, and the cliches are played with charm by the Japanese cast, but it's humorless and unoriginal whenever the "Westerners" take to the forefront. Far less than the David Lean or Kurosawa epics it tries too hard to pay tribute to.