The Path of Honour

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2004)

If you take for granted that a Japanese samurai in 1876 can speak impeccable English you will most certainly love this movie because all the rest is practically flawless and it's a really unmatched work of art, romantic and epic. We watch here the conflict between two civilizations, cultures and ways of life: a dying one based in honour, heroism, valour and loyalty and the other based in greed for power, disloyalty and meanness. The outcome of this unfair fight takes place in the battlefield through scenes hardly reached till now in any movie I have seen before. The brilliant direction of this movie is not affected by the apparent easiness and lightness of the final scenes which leaves us with a few doubts from the angle of the logic and likelihood of that part of the plot. But like an Italian would say: "se non e vero e bene trovato" (if it's not true it's well invented). The main character whose role is performed by Tom Cruise is very well depicted, showing us the spiritual evolution of the soldier who goes to Japan with the charge of teaching and training the new army, haunted by the memories of massacres of innocent women and children that he watched in his own country perpetrated by the army he had served till then. In contact with the rapidly changing Japanese reality his mind suffers a complete catharsis which leads him first to abandon alcohol into which he had taken refuge, and then progressively to assimilate the moribund cultural values of the people whom in principle he should help to fight. On the whole a beautiful movie to be seen in terms of images and which will make you think a lot of things over.