And Americans Wonder Why People Loathe Them.

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2004)

The Last Samurai is a unique movie if for no other reason than that it gives foreign audiences of all stripes another opportunity to despise Americans. On one side (equivalent to today's neo-conservative right) we have loathsome American diplomats and careerist officers of the U.S. Army pressuring - er, make that "assisting" - a foreign government to purchase U.S. goods and services - sound familiar? While on the other side we have another American officer (equivalent to today's stereotypical leftist) who thinks he's absorbing Samurai culture but in reality is reflecting the mindset that white men - or at least Americans - know what's best for everyone. Unfortunately, it's mostly the Japanese, Samurai and non-Samurai, that eventually wind up littering the battlefield.
What really comes out of this film is that American movie producers still regard war as a kind of Texas high school football game. They seem never to have seen the real human meat of dead and maimed bodies. (They only need go to any Chechen web site to view the real thing.) And if there is one message that might come out of this film it's that maybe the world would be an infinitely better place - for the US and for the rest of the world - if Americans would just stay at home.