Very Hollywood, very Tom Cruise, very well crafted, very enjoyable.....but, not sure if it's really samurai

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 2004)

spoilers warning
(all the names herein are the artists, names rather than that of the characters they play)
I'll skip the synopsis as one can be found easily within this website or in other movie websites. Not long after the start of the movie, once it got to the heavy-handed, absolutely over-done scene in which Cruise demonstrates that the army he is training is not yet ready for battle, I knew what to expect for the rest of the movie.
Comparison of Last Samurai to Dances with Wolves is almost inevitable, and has been done again and again. Other than the similarity in plot, one subtler point comes out in the comparison: the plot can fit pretty well into any different cultural background and work just as well. The corollary then is the question: is this really a movie about samurai, or is it about Americans?
For a real samurai movie, I think few will argue that the beat example is Kurosawa's `Shichinin on Sanurai (7 samurai)' (1954), in which there is no karahari-cum-decapitation, no rousing heroic speeches. What looks Japanese is not necessarily Japanese. For example, immensely popular operetta The Mikado is anything but Japanese. It's a satire about the British. Similarly, Last Samurai is an American view on heroism. I am making this assertion merely as a statement of fact, as I see it, without intentions of making any value judgement.
For entertainment value, Last Samurai is completely satisfying. The scene where Cruise disposes of four or five ambushing samurais reminds me of a similar scene in Duel on Ganryu Island (1956) where Koji Tsuruta (actor, not movie character) similarly disposes of four attackers in the street. The scene in Last Samurai however is done with innovative imagination, showing the audience what happens first, and then allowing them to savour it again immediately through Cruise's `instant flashback'. The final battle scene is also very skilfully handled, well balanced between close-up skirmish and overview of strategy and formation. In the latter department, however, a movie has yet to be found that can surpass Spartacus (1960).
In the romance side, the scene where lovely Koyuki puts on samurai armours for Cruise is shot with tender loving care. This scene, however, is several notches below a similar scene in a samurai movie (notice I did not say `another' samurai movie) `Tasogare Seibei (Twilight Samurai)' (2002) in which Rie Miyazawa tends to the hair of Hiroyuki Sanada before he goes off to a duel. (Details in my comments posted on 12 May 2003). Hiroyuki Sanada, by the way, appears also in Last Samurai, playing Ujio, the samurai who teaches Cruise how to use a sword. A professional, Hiroyuki of course delivers what is expected of him in Last Samurai. Compared with what he achieved in Tasogare Seibei, however, what he did in Last Samurai is kindergarten stuff. An actor has to make a living too, I guess.
Emerging from the cinema, while totally satisfied with getting the full worth of the admission I paid, I couldn't help allowing my mind to wander off to an alternative ending, in which Ken Watanabe commits karahari to show his devotion to the emperor rather than escape with Cruise. In the finale, Cruise leads the samurais in the last battle, and is killed. This would have been a much more powerful, as well as logical ending. The treatment of Ken Watanabe escaping and coming back to fight against the emperor takes away much of the poignancy. But then, who can argue with Hollywood?