The last Hollywood waste?

Rating: 6/10 (26 January 2005)

As may be gleaned from the above title, I was not terribly impressed with this film, which was not to say it didn't have high points.
We'll start with what was impressive. Tom Cruise. The scene where he is selling rifles while drunk and half reliving his Indian fighting days had some creepy and impressive acting. When his military superior pulls him aside and Cruise tells him he'd kill him for free, chilling. When the translator asks how to scalp someone, and Cruise shows him, freaky. But these are just a few scenes; it's not that Cruise is bad during the rest of the movie, just that he has few lines which are at all impressive outside of those 3 scenes. Besides, by half way through the movie you're thinking oh not another boring Hollywood plot, which of course it is.
Well, I was already started on what's bad, so I'll continue. Essentially although none of the acting is bad, the plot is stupid putrid Hollywood garbage. It is always so sad when a movie starts with promise and ends up being such a fizzle. I mean did he have to live with the wife of the man he killed? I mean if she didn't fall in love with him and just hated him throughout the movie I wouldn't care, but she did fall in love with him, how ridicules! To make matters worse, white boy insists on riding into battle dressed as a samurai, and being the only survivor to return the fallen master's samurai's sword to the emperor. Oh, and who can forget the scene in which all the Japanese military, who just finished the slaughter, bowed to the people they killed, STUPID. Hollywood needs some new ideas, why couldn't they have let the movie progress with good dialog and interesting introspection. I found the scene in which the master of the samurai was looking at the Indian pouch a very telling and powerful moment, no noise, no violence, no campy push for a tear, just letting what is be, and letting that have the power. Towards the end the movie has way too much slow motion death and forced sadness, it's hokey and over-dramatic.
While this is no Battlefield Earth, I still could not recommend it overall. Parts of this movie show great potential, and parts reek of Hollywood hype.
~Ryan