The Last Samurai (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | The Last Samurai |
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| Director: | Edward Zwick |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
While Japan undergoes tumultuous transition to a more Westernized society in 1876-77, The Last Samurai gives epic sweep to an intimate story of cultures at a crossroads. In America, tormented Civil War veteran Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is coerced by a mercenary officer (Tony Goldwyn) to train the Japanese Emperor’s troops in the use of modern weaponry. Opposing this “progress” is a rebellion of samurai warriors, holding fast to their traditions of honor despite strategic disadvantage. As a captive of the samurai leader (Ken Watanabe), Algren learns, appreciates, and adopts the samurai code, switching sides for a climactic battle that will put everyone’s honor to the ultimate test. All of which makes director Edward Zwick’s noble epic eminently worthwhile, even if its Hollywood trappings (including an all-too-conventional ending) prevent it from being the masterpiece that Zwick and screenwriter John Logan clearly wanted it to be. Instead, The Last Samurai is an elegant mainstream adventure, impressive in all aspects of its production. It may not engage the emotions as effectively as Logan’s script for Gladiator, but like Cruise’s character, it finds its own quality of honor. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
Chalk up another complex, finely detailed characterization to Tom Cruise, whose portrayal of a dissolute warrior makes this opulently mounted film one of the very best in his increasingly distinguished oeuvre. Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a Civil War hero whose battlefield excesses have driven him into a permanent state of self-loathing. Cynical and opportunistic, he accepts a lucrative commission to go to Japan and train the emperor’s army for a lengthy campaign against once-loyal samurai resentful of their monarch’s embrace of Western culture. Algren is forced into a premature clash with these disciplined, highly skilled fighters and is captured when his insufficiently trained men beat a desperate retreat. This is where the story actually begins: We see this able but dissipated man grow to admire his captors and embrace their philosophy, gradually regaining his honor and sense of purpose under the watchful eye of his captor, samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Algren’s moral regeneration isn’t accomplished overnight, and director Edward Zwick does a fine job of conveying the character’s gradual transformation with pithy vignettes and relatively brief snatches of dialogue. He draws a sharp contrast between the principled, traditionalist samurai and the opportunistic Japanese businessmen who have persuaded the emperor to modernize the country and turn against the warrior brotherhood that has served the throne for hundreds of years. These machinations lead inevitably to a climactic battle that is one of the finer depictions of hand-to-hand encounters in recent memory. In fact, The Last Samurai has several such sequences, but it would be a mistake to label it an action film. Zwick and Cruise have made this remarkable story much more: a paean to honor, courage, and devotion to duty. It’s a deeply absorbing and sometimes profoundly moving tale of regeneration and redemption, superbly visualized and brilliantly acted. Ed Hulse
Related works
The Last Samurai: Original Motion Picture Score
Whether Tom Cruise’s portrayal of a 19th century American soldier cum samurai warrior will be remembered with the same pangs of pop-cultural bemusement that befell John Wayne playing Genghis Khan remains to be seen. But its musical soundtrack does mark an auspicious occasion: pop musician-turned-composer Hans Zimmer’s 100th score since beginning his film career in 1988. A pioneer of fusing both the electronic and orchestral and the Westernized with the indigenous, Zimmer does both here with skill, drawing heavily on samples of the traditional Taiko (a…
