Role reversal

Rating: Null/10 (11 July 2004)

Watanabe should have been Hopalong Cassidy and Cruise the Gaby Hayes character: we're supposed to believe that Watanabe's Last Samurai would find Cruise's "Nelson" interesting? Interesting to keep around....to keep alive...to introduce, or rather force, into the household of his sister, the man who Nelson just recently killed? (Cruise also doesn't seem to age, to mature, as the years go on; the Gary Coleman of his age.) The LS defers to Cruise in climactic battle scenes, even though Cruise is not trained in the ways of sword/bow & arrow, etc. warfare? What possibly can the LS learn from this shallow twerp?
Loved the epic last battle scene though: a final charge, on horseback, shrapnel-laden Howitzer shells notwithstanding, into the breech with well trained soldiers firing the latest in rifles....missing the two hero's. Then the non- Saturday-nite-specials; 200 round a minute Gatling guns enter the picture and the director actually shows contact as the bullets explode into our two heros (sort of like the bad-fantasy ending of DiPalma's "Scarface" with Pacino taking in more lead than produced at Shiloh.......and still not dying!) who will not be stopped! They cannot be stopped! Honor, Zwick-style, insists that a ritual suicide be performed, on the battlefield, by the second banana, cradled by Nelson. All the soldiers, who presumably had friends and/or buddies killed, show "respect" and let the Great Man die, as well as letting the loathsome white foreigner live.
If one needs additional proof to stay away from "epic" Hollywood movies and virtually any Tom Cruise movie of the past ten years, then visit a friend"s house who has just paid the rental for "The Last Samurai" and experience this movie.