Generally enjoyable Hollywood action period piece

Rating: Null/10 (8 February 2004)

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs
The year is 1876.Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is a disillusioned confederate soldier who's taken to the bottle and is haunted by nightmarish flashbacks of the atrocities he was forced to commit under the command of the ruthless Colnell Bagley (Tony Goldwyn).However,Bagley has a new proposition.Unscrupulous Japanese railroad contractor Omura (Masato Harada) wants him to train the army of Emporor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura) to lead a rebellion against the army of the samurai who are opposing the development of his latest contract.However,time is money and,with the army unproperly trained,Omura orders them in to battle where they unsurprisingly lose their confidence and are effortlessly defeated by the well-trained,hardened samurai warriors.Nathan,however,is spared,the commanding samurai officer obviously impressed with his fighting ability,and taken to the land of the samurai,under the command of Emporor Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe).Over the course of the next year,he discovers them to be the more fair-practicing group of people and,after becoming accustomed to their mannerisms and practices,the westerner gradually blends in with them and leads them to victory against the real oppressors.
I had the same reservations with The Last Samurai that I seem to have with any film headbilling Tom Cruise.My cousin's rather fond of him,but I always seemed to regard him as more of a 'movie star' as opposed to a totally convincing 'actor.'In this instance,however,my reservations proved to be rather unfounded,as he carries the film fairly well.True,he gets a little carried away with himself here and there,but generally speaking,he does the business and does it well.Of the supporting cast,it's as encouraging as ever to see two British players in a major Hollywood production,in the shape of Billy Connolly as Zebulon Gant,a former comrade of Nathan's who encourages him to take up on Omura's offer and Timothy Spall,as his eccentric contact in Japan,my namesake,Mr Graham.All the Japanese actors,Watanabe,Harada,Nakamura,are perfectly fine too.
I noticed that the first half of the film seemed to take itself rather too seriously,however,it seemed to telepathically sense this and threw in plenty of humour and light relief in the middle and the second part.The story is well developed and covers all the aspects it is attempting to explore,however,it was billed as an action movie,and spends considerably more time delving around in sappy melo-drama as opposed to satisfying the expectations of what the vast majority of the audience payed for.The action/battle scenes,spectacular though they are,are rather few and far between.Perhaps the movie was about quarter-of-an-hour too long,but all the same...
Speaking of the battle scenes,this is where the movie really comes alive,in every sense of the word.It's not just how epic and exciting they themselves are,it's all the scenes associated with them as well,adding untold depth to men we only expected to see being trained and fighting in the fields.To wit,a scene where Nathan orders a young Japanese soldier to shoot him before he shoots him,in order to give him an impression of what a merciless killer he will need to be in order to survive the battlefield.Or how the soldiers,former peasants who've never fought in a battle before in their lives,lose their nerve as the samurai army emerge in to battle.
There's some fine dialogue on offer too,evenly distributed throughout the film from beginning to end,and carrying the script wonderfully,only to wind up with a sappy,Hollywood-ised ending that will have you doing a little bit of laughing and a little bit of chringing with it's underlying corniness.Still,if you're looking for a fun night out,it's great fun and a film you can only truly appreciate at the cinema anyway.***