Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2004)

You can't really fault Tom Cruise's performance: once again he reveals that he can be more than adequate without being stellar. It's more the film as a whole; it's general lack of emotional impact.
Cruise plays a frontier hero of the American-Indian 'wars', cynical and filled with self-loathing over his part in the atrocities. A large salary lures him to Japan to modernise and train the Emperor's army, and to fight off an insurgent Samurai and his peasant army, who refuse to use firearms.
The most obvious parallel that springs to mind is 'Dances With Wolves', but 'Last Samurai' has little of the emotional clout of 'Wolves'. Instead it seems a transparent white liberal attempt to redeem the country from American Indian holocaust by personifying the nation in Cruise's character. This may have worked if the film hadn't been so inexplicably flat and dull. It makes gestures at poignancy and intensity, but they fall curiously flat, and for much of the time it's simply too slow.
Not a bad movie, but falls short of its own goals. 6 out of 10.