What do you want from me????!!!

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2004)

This pompous, one-dimensioned, uninteresting, long and phony picture tries really hard to portrait `the real Japan'. Needless to say one single frame from any Mizoguchi film (sixty, seventy years old as it may be) is ten times worth than this banal reproduction, poor ensemble of local color and cliché. From the lifeless, mummified characters that seem to bring together  and in a lighter dose- the charlatanry of Morpheus from The Matrix and Karate Kid's Pat Morita, to the cheap plot devices and filmmaking (we see the sword fight and right afterwards the videoclip of the fight, a nicely learned lesson from Tarantino's school), Cruise's attempt to build a legendary figure embodied with Custer's bravura and Samurai's honor is anything but believable, rather a wannabee metaphor of some new age dubious doctrine. Cruise character is tormented by memories of his past as a women and children's murder; this issue never nails on the audience as in the case of `Unforgiven', where the character's inner demons must be confronted and defeated by paying a hell of a prize. In fact it is precisely Eastwood's humanity what constitutes his heroism. On the other hand, Cruise's experience `on the other side' is more of a tourist kind compared with Harrison Ford's life with the Amish in `Witness' or Gene Kelly's magic discovery of `Brigadoon', two classic examples of imperfect individuals transcending themselves after coping with a world that is not their own. Bad as a film could be, there's always one or two scenes worth remembering. Not in this one. Let's give credit to the title and hope it'll be the last.