Tom Cruise Vanity Project -- ouch!

Rating: Null/10 (13 January 2004)

'The Last Samurai' I found to be a very distasteful experience. Somehow I thought it was based on a bestseller. So I was expecting the bestseller's author to have done the historical research and, by turn, this would have been transferred to the movie. No such luck. News flash! This movie makes up its own history. This movie is all about creating a vanity project for Tom Cruise. The cinematography is fantastic, the costume design is gorgeous, the battle scenes brilliantly staged. But, all of this is what makes the film so frustrating. It's just all so unbelievable! Possible spoiler: The final battle sequences especially are just so over the top, it's embarrassing. Also, I find this movie inherently racist. The idea that the Tom Cruise character, a Western white man, could have been such a catalyst in a samurai's life in such a short time - `the white man comes to save the day', oh, yeccch! The Japanese are a uniquely xenophobic culture and quite convinced of their own superiority, thank you very much! Excuse me, but GM is getting its ass kicked by Toyota! 'The Last Samurai' I find to be such repugnant trash. With the cast and crew and high production values, I was expecting just so much more. (Aside: the next time you see a movie produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner - run in the opposite direction!)