Shogun Redux

Rating: 5/10 (9 December 2004)

Last Samurai was the first of many historical epics green-lit after the revival of the genre by Gladiator, and though it shares a screenwriter with that Oscar-winning epic, it hearkens back to something a bit older.
I find myself on the fence about this one because it manages to be the very best of Hollywood and the very worst for different reasons. The same can be said of director Ed Zwick, who's brand of earnest schmaltz can result in either a perfectly tuned masterpiece - like Glory - or saccharine dreck - Blood Diamond, another film with excellent ingredients but the same antagonizing flaws found here.
Drawing deep parallels with James Clavell's Shoun, and the miniseries that followed (one you quickly become convinced everyone involved with this film was made to watch at some point), Last Samurai follows disabused Westerner to the Empire of the Sun. There he will put his own life and honor code in question and become seduced by local culture - and, of course, a local woman - and redeem himself in heroic ways. Tom Cruise lays it thick as the self-loathing Captain Algren, especially in a misjudged parody of a firing lesson scene from Glory, but then the screen is lit up by Ken Watanabe, and much is forgiven, wrapped as he and everything else is in lush cinematography and a rousing score.
Where the film falls flat - like Blood Diamond to a certain extent - is in underestimating our intelligence or cultural openness. Since a non-white or non-American character is apparently not enough to hold our interest, we are made to see everything through Algren's eyes, rather than merely have be our initial conduit into this unfamiliar world. Having Cruise in the role, capable actor that he is, compounds the problem: every scene that tries to make him a Hollywood hero, rather than an actual character, is unconvincing, especially the physics and culture-defying silliness of the ending.
An okay Summer blockbuster, but hardly worth remembering.