Americanisation of Japanese History

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2009)

Hollywood have often found subjects in history and have try to make it into an American story. World War II is often a subject that is tackled to make the Americans look great with the expenses of the role the British and other allies had. This time Hollywood focuses on Japanese history in 1870s where the Japanese starts to modernise, industrialise and contact the rest of the world. It makes out that the Americans played an important part, despite that it was the British and the Germans were actually involved.
Set in 1876 and 1877, Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is a veteran of the American Civil War and Indian Wars. He performs for audiences in San Francisco and suffers from alcoholism and war guilt. He receives an offer from his out sergeant Zebulon Gant (Billy Connolly) and former commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bagley (Tony Goldwyn) to go to Japan to help train their new army to fight the Samurai resistance, fighting against modernisation. Early on he makes some progress when training the Japanese conscripts, similar to Edward Zwick's earlier film Glory (including having an Irish sergeant and shooting a pistol to show the soldiers are not ready for battle). But Algren and his regiment are sent to fight the samurais before their were ready. During the battle the new Army is easily defeated and Algren is capture. The leader of the Samurais, Lord Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) keeps Algren alive, hoping to learn about his enemy. Algren is trapped in a small village for a whole winter, but Katsumoto and the village teach him about the samurai culture. Algren goes naviee, and ends up joining the samurais, improving his fighting style and respecting the fighters.
Edward Zwick is a respected director, having done some good films in his career. He is an action director, but his films do have a moral core behind them, such as Glory and Blood Diamond. The action in this film is bloody, and well executed. It is excellent viewing in that sense. His cinematographer John Toll also shoots some lovely scenes, with excellent landscapes of New Zealand (a stand in for Japan). Hans Zimmer also conduces a good score to the film. Zwick does show Algern and Katsumoto as out and out good whilst Bagley and the Emperor's adviser Omura (Masato Harada) as the true bad guys in a typical Hollywood fashion other characters are shown to be more mixed. The Emperor (Shichinosuke Nakamura) is shown to be a weak-willed young man who needs advise, but respects Katsumoto and is only bringing about modernisation because he thinks that is what is best for Japan. Timothy Spall plays an English interpreter Simon Graham: he starts out as the Hollywood stereotype of an Englishman (which I hate), but shows to be a character who respects both sides and is a more realistic character (except for the Hollywood Englishness). There is a really good cast to the film (except Billy Connolly). Ken Watanabe earned an Oscar nod for his performance and he was really good: he is a talented actor. Tom Cruise offers the typical Tom Cruise performance, which is pretty decent and he is good in the action scenes. They are a number of talented Japanese actors in the film who performed well. Zwick has been good at casting in the past.
This is an interesting subject of history, and an area which isn't very well known by people in the West. The film was very popular in Japan and was praised for it's handling of Japanese culture. But there are historical inaccuracies (which I will also score down a film if they are major). As said it was the British and the German who was trained and built up the Japanese military because Britain had the best navy at the time, and the Germans had the best army. The Japanese saw Britain as a model because they were island nations. Japan's first modern alliance was with the British in 1902. Japan also modernised because they did not want to end up being like China who was seen as the sick man of Asia and was being craved up by European nations. Russia was a serious threat to Japan. The Bushidō code also had a darker side to it, which we saw during the Second World War. This was skipped over during the film.
The film also reminded me Glory and also trying to be a bit like Dances with Wolves goes East. Zwick did lift some scenes from Glory and placed them in The Last Samurai. That was a bit lazy. Zwick also seemed to try and be like David Lean and Akira Kurosawa when making this film, especially the latter. He wanted to make a grand epic like those two, but more violence. He should have just tried to make a film in his own way.
It's a decent enough film, but I think it would have been better as a Japanese film, not a Hollywood film about Japan.