Horrible Hollywood script

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2004)

This was Cruise's worst film in many years. As many have pointed out, it's just "Dances with Wolves in Japan", but instead of a good epic story we here get..... crap. Cruise is miscast and overacts badly in some scenes, especially in the beginning.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
The film is full of clichÃ©s and stereotypes. The two leading Samurais are both charismatic, but that's just about the only really good thing in the movie. Some things about the plot are just plain ridiculous. The emperor has full control over both sides of the fighters, we learn, so WHY doesn't he just stop the whole damn thing?
And the reason why the samurai are fighting is because of something related to a railroad. But it is never clear why they must fight it so much. They stand for a traditional way of living and the railroad signals more modern ways of living, yes, yes, but does the railroad really mean the absolute end to the samurai way of living? We don't ever get to know that. It seems they're just fighting and fighting and killing for no real reason other than to stop progress (sounds like terrorism to me). In the end Cruise goes back to live with the Japanese woman, and since that is possible, I guess the community wasn't really that threatened itself by the railroad, anyway.
The blending of epic melodrama with the 'understanding a different culture' theme and fullblown killing spree action is not really a good mix. It's just too much. Really. The killing and dying of dignified main samurais (and sons of samurais) also gets really exploitative.
A particular bad point; One scene has Cruise asking a bad soldier to shoot him at 20 feet distance, because he knows that the soldier will miss; thereby he can show his point to the generals AND his balls of brass.... That's the lamest kind of Hollywood writing I've seen through all last year! Who the f*** would ever do that?
There is no good story in this film, it just pretends to have one.
People, open your eyes...