Samurai Hei

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2006)

I love sushi. I also love Toshiro Mifune. Guess that makes me a prime candidate for a samurai warrior - at least, that's all it seems to take for a Westerner in this movie to wear kamishimo and wield katana. Despite that annoyance, this film crafts a sincere portrayal of an outsider undergoing an assimilation into Samurai culture without Western disparagement or cheap stereotype satire.
*The Last Samurai* is a grandiose film, sweeping, majestic, inspiring - even WITH Tom Cruise in it.
The late 1800's saw Japanese businessmen convince Imperial Japan that the shogunate government advocating military rule through shogun and samurai (*bakufu*) - was fettering the country to the dark ages and hindering their financial and technological advancement. In transforming feudal Japan into a modern nation, they did, in fact, hire Westerners to train their outmoded armies in the Way of the Gun.
As imbecilic as that may sound (bringing haughty Yankees into a milieu where blade technology had attained a zenith in construction and killing prowess in the hands of the samurai millennia before the Americas were a twinkle in Europe's eye), the gun did historically overrun the sword as the primary weapon of warfare in Imperial Japan.
This flensing of *bakufu* came to a head during the reign of Emperor Meiji, by all accounts as naïve, indecisive and ignorant of the best political path for his country as he is portrayed by young Shichinosuke Nakamura in this movie. From this "historical context," this film's plot centers around one last village of renegade samurai, led by Katsumoto (the leviathan Ken Watanabe, out-acting the movie's titular "star" by acres), obstructing the Way of the New Government, embodied by Meiji.
To combat Katsumoto's outlaws, Meiji's CEO analogues rescue a burned-out lush of a Civil War vet, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), from his Dudley Moore *Arthur* impersonations, to train their "modern" soldiery, a conscription of weaselly, panty-wetting nerds, whose ineptitude in battle rivals that of *Star Wars* stormtroopers who trip over twigs and knock themselves unconscious when chased by Ewoks.
Ergo, it is no surprise when Algren's Benny Hill-ian troops are decimated during their first battle, Algren being taken alive as Katsumoto's prisoner.
Through the winter months, Algren is imprisoned by the natural isolation of the samurai village. Ostensibly to learn of his enemy's tactics, Katsumoto engages Algren in philosophical conversations, whereby Algren  begrudgingly at first - comes to learn the Way of *Bushido*, the samurai honor code, embracing it with a passion when he finds it fills the vacuum in his guts that had turned him to the Way of Dudley Moore's Arthur. In being an American soldier, he found only shame where he thought there was honor (when ordered to kill women and children); now, in this most unlikely place  the village of his enemy  he is startled to find honor once more in *bushido*.
It is during this powerfully moving second act that the movie simultaneously excels and fails: excels because of its quietude, its controlled passages defining Algren's recapturing of his humanity lost  and fails because Algren becomes too adept too quickly as a samurai swordsman. There is foreshadowing that he is a marksman and like most Civil War officers, he is issued a saber, yet all it takes is one *Rocky* montage and he is besting his fencing tutor, Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada, who bears a marked resemblance to Toshiro Mifune, so was aces in my book from the get-go  giving Tom Cruise a beating with a *bokken* in the rain upon their first meeting only increased his net worth.)
It would have been enough that Algren embrace the creed and find "life in every breath," but in following the Bushido For Dummies handbook and having Algren become a master swordsman in the space of one winter (and mastering the language to boot), the film ironically adopts the superior westerner stance that it fooled us into believing it was trying to avoid, thereby cheapening the lifelong devotion, dedication and discipline of true samurai.
That ain't right.
Vainglorious Yankee spirit triumphing once again  from a country where any kind of dedication to a discipline is disparaged; where collective bone-laziness has created such "time-saving" devices as the salad shooter, the leaf-blower, the workout video and exercise machines that end up as clothes racks  THIS is the society whom we are meant to believe can send one of its flock into the heart of a millennia-aged culture and assimilate it in one winter?
Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese oh I don't THINK so.
When Algren is delivered back into "civilization," he finds he cannot re-assimilate into the shameful *dishabille* of his own people, so allies with the samurai against his own army.
Thankfully, no computer warriors were killed on the final battlefield, hence, these rambunctious scenes resembled Mel Gibson's last-of-the-HUMAN battle epics, *Braveheart*. Gloriously so.
An unnecessary romance blossoms between Algren and the wife of the warrior he killed before being taken prisoner. Though it might be construed as Algren attaining such a level of respect that the warrior's widow is now considering him fresh meat (when once she considered him as smelly as a pig) the real reason is because this film sports a bankable Hollywood Man-Toy which necessitates a gratuitous romance for the chick demographic.
Director Edward Zwick and writers, John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz and Zwick himself might have forged a ten-star movie had they not made Algren such a superlative warrior and then opted for Hollywood Happy Ending protocol; steering so close to immortality, then insulting us with a paint-by-numbers.
Still, watching a samurai film without Toshiro Mifune is like eating sushi without fish.
(Read this review unabridged at: http://www.poffysmoviemania.com/LastSamurai.html)