Entertaining if Overblown

Rating: 6/10 (7 May 2004)

I'm a huge fan of both the Western and Samurai film genres and so when I saw the trailers to The Last Samurai I felt a keen excitement, only to be disappointed when business took me away from English language movie theaters during the film's theatrical release. I snapped the film up the first day it became available on DVD and settled in to enjoy the film at last...and settled deeper in, and deeper in...is the film unending or does it only seem like it? Tom Cruise is wonderful  and I'm not particularly a fan  and Watanabe is great as his Samurai counterpart and the action sequences are rousingly filmed, but the filmmakers failed to remain true to the spirit of their story and so fall into ham-handed cliches, melodrama, and empty sentimentality. The director and writer, it seems, wanted not only to give the Tom Cruise the glorious death in battle that centers the film, but to keep him alive to save the Emperor from the wicked ways of the west AND to get the girl in the end, too. The filmmakers want to have their cake and eat it too, and so they made a film that gives the viewer neither.