Overrated and Ignorant

Rating: Null/10 (5 December 2003)

I am both surprised and a bit appalled at all the good buzz this film is getting from critics and audiences alike. I don't want to seem snobbish, but I strongly believe the "Last Samurai" has serious problems from beginning to end. The first points being historical - although the Japanese Meiji government did hire Western military advisors during their late 19th century modernization, they were primarily Prussian (for their land forces) and British (for their navy). In addition, nowhere in my academic readings (I was an East Asian Studies major) did those advisors take part in putting down the actual samurai revolts that occurred (primarily the Satsuma and Choshu Rebellions), and certainly none became samurai and joined the revolts. My next big problem is the one several others have mentioned - the "Dances With Wolves" syndrome. Tom Cruise's character's exposure to the samurai, his observations and eventual assimilation seem honorable to many viewers, but this one found them both shallow on one hand and condescending on the other. The characterization of all the samurai as being just, disciplined, and honorable is terribly one-sided, and seems to be part of the filmmakers agenda of casting everything in black and white terms (with "good" samurai on one hand and "bad" modernists on the other). In actuality, though there were aspects of the samurai lifestyle that deserved respect, one most not forget it also involved a rigid caste system (with oppressed peasants at the bottom) and these men above all were soldiers - men trained to kill other men. The so-called "bad" modernists did aid in the extinction of part of Japan's cultural uniqueness, but they also brought about modern sanitation, science, universal education, democratic reforms and rule of law. And, to add, the sympathizers of traditionalists movements such as those advocated by the movie's character of Katsumoto (based on real-life warrior-rebel Saigo Takamori) were the one's who eventually rose to power in the 1930s, using the bushido code to justify the brutal militarist regime that subjugated China, Korea, and Southeast Asia and sneak attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor (makes Tom Cruise's decision to aid the suicide charge during the "Last Samurai's" key battle all the more ironic). Tom Cruise's rapid learning of traditional kenjutsu (swordfighting) and mastery of using 'mushin' (no mind) in battle is both inaccurate and insulting - especially since anyone who knows a little about traditional Japanese martial arts is aware that it takes years (and not the movie's four months) to become capable enough to utilizes these skills effectively in actual combat (Heck, it took me ten years to get my black belt in aikido, and I started training in Japan and am half Japanese). And don't even get me started with that climactic scene in which Cruise seems to lecture the Meiji Emperor on the meaning of being Japanese. Last of all, I have problems with "Last Samurai" strictly in movie terms. I personally found the film's pacing to be a mess. The introduction of Tom Cruise's character at the film's beginning seemed rushed - I would have liked to get a better grip on his psychology before the voyage to Japan. Once in Japan, too much happens over too much time without any real drive or motivation. Why do Katsumoto's men allow Cruise to train in kenjutsu? Why doesn't Cruise (a veteran field soldier with frontier experience) even attempt an escape into the mountains once he's well? And despite director Edward Zwick's publically stated admiration for Akira Kurosawa, he doesn't have that great director's painterly eye, or the ability to capture the true kinetic ferocity of combat (cinematographer John Toll gets the lighting right, but otherwise, during the battles, stuff just happens without any real internal rhythm). He even misses out completely on what Kurosawa brought to his period dramas thematically - even in his most rousing adventure films, Kurosawa always reflected on the downside of the samurai lifestyle: the unceasing violence, the uncertain life, the entrapment by rules, and the hollowness of making a life by killing. The "Last Samurai" was not even really filmed in Japan - its verdant green fields and hills shot in scenic New Zealand (I kept waiting for Frodo and Gandalf to leap from behind a hill) and its Tokyo city streets built on an LA backlot - and I felt the sense of artificiality running through its every frame.