Appearance of Cruise ruins a perfect movie

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2004)

This is as close you could come to making a perfect movie as you could and get a miss.
Tom Cruise is a great movie star. I enjoyed him in "Top Gun." But he is not up to this part - it is too difficult for him to play against a backdrop of the most beautiful and rich culture on the planet!
That's the way it is portrayed. Fine, it's a movie - they can say whatever they want - evil white devils corrupting innocent noble "savages" once again. yawn.... great freakin' movie though! was I entertained? was i moved? was i caught up in the action? was it beautiful to look at - there were scenes where I thought my eyes were literally drinking up the images... i could almost taste the "water" with my eyes.
In my opinion getting a "metrosexual" guy like TC instead of a man, like Kirk Douglas (I know) weakened this _entertaining_beautiful_emotion-packed_action-packed_rich-dialog_even-richer-culture_ movie from being a 10+/10 to a 9/10.
Lose Cruise and you got a movie that was made for the ages... now all u got is a movie made for certain ages... like 13 yr. olds :/
-Zafoid
PS: if u don't believe me look at the original "7 Samurai" - how many pretty faces are in that? NONE NICHT NADA ZERO! Yet it will be remembered literally _forever_. Ask a film student about "7 Samurai" and they will swoon... ask them about "The Last Samurai" and they will say: "yeah, i saw it, what'd ya' wanna know?"
pish-posh and piffle. Hollowood will never get it right. :/
-Z