tripe sashimi

Rating: 3/10 (28 February 2006)

take the ingredients of the Hollywood Western, displace it onto Asian shores, and focus it on a misfit who embodies the stereotype attributes: 1) faithless, 2) lacking in morals, & 3) reluctantly gets himself into a situation that calls for the wakening of conscience & the resurrection of his heroic ideals, now add the mythical attractions of the East from the P.O.V. of the West, and continue to enforce the believe that "we're American, and even though there are lots of us--good and bad, we eventually will make your world a better place"...
what do you get in result? a typical Hollywood treatment that caters not just to entertain the audience with a long stretch of some facts with fiction, but an indirect statement that can be inferred as glorification of values that once stood tall as pillars and foundations of the American spirit.
Zwick probably did his research, and probably does have a lot of respect for the history, culture, and honors of the Japanese... but the film doesn't show it beyond the "been there and done that" plot-points we've seen in so many other films dealing with Americans in Asia (think BLACK RAIN)--"we love your sense of honor and loyalty, and your artwork and etiquette... but we have a better way--better yet, we can adopt your ways and do it better than you, and your women will end up liking us too!" Tom Cruise hold no candle to the likes of Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada, but they are the support cast? wow, who came up with that formula? The Marketing guys thought hard about appeasing the Japanese audience with their revered thespians... but as a sidecast to Tom Cruise who basically plays the same character in every movie? movies don't have to be history books on film--all facts and no fiction, but I would expect this type of menudo to have been made in the 40's as WWII propaganda... we're in the 21st century now. If not for the innovation, audience do expect more than poorly written scripts that try to do a wool-pull over our eyes with budget and promotion.
and on the battle-scenes, even Wong Kar'Wai's ASHES OF TIME (1994), made on a shoe-string budget compared to THE LAST SAMURAI, presented a more compelling and heroic depiction of the warrior's fight.