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A Warner Brothers release. Written by John Logan, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz ;directed by Edward Zwick; starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. Released to DVD on May 4, 2004.  Edward Zwick is a supremely talented and competent director, as evidenced by his previous work on films like Courage Under Fire and The Siege. With this in mind, Zwick’s latest project, The Last Samurai, came as something as a surprise for me. Employing a downright amateur level of story telling, The Last Samurai could well have taken some scripting lessons from Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. At a certain point in time, mainstream filmmakers are going to have to wake up and realize that there is little inherent tension in repeatedly placing their $25 million star in harm’s way on-screen; audiences are smart enough to understand that Tom Cruise just isn’t going to get killed in any of his movies, removing most of the supposed nerve-wracking suspense from the dramatic action. Cruise stars here as Nathan Algren, a decorated member of the United States Army during the 1870’s. Algren is the consummate Cruise character. It’s not a stretch to suggest that Algren’s nickname should have been Maverick. Immensely talented at soldiering, Algren’s ability to perform in this field is impaired–and almost characterized–by his inability to deal with past mistakes that he has made. During a particularly grueling lapse of judgment, Algren participated in his company’s massacre of Native American women and children. Algren has numerous flashbacks and panic attacks about these events. Fate (and the Japanese Emperor) calls upon Algren to go to Japan and train a force of conscripts to do battle against the rebel forces of the samurai, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Quickly captured by Katsumoto, Algren begins to learn the code of the samurai and suddenly begins to gain perspective on his life. Some movies are ruined by a conflagration of smaller errors, others are done in by one or two glaringly bad decisions. The Last Samurai distinctly falls into the latter grouping. The material is formulaic at best and Cruise is horribly miscast in the lead role. Despite his screen presence and his Hollywood largess, Cruise has never been a particularly good actor. There have been certain roles that he has delivered more ably than others, Jerry Maguire in particular, but the truth of the matter is that Cruise just doesn’t have much of a range of emotions to call upon. His displa.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splay of "drunk" here in The Last Samurai remains virtually unchanged from his display of "drunk" in 1986’s Top Gun. Cruise slurs his words, he stumbles about and, on occasion, flashes his trademarked grin at people before gesturing animatedly at them with his empty shot glass. To sell the plot material here, the fish-out-of-water story about one man’s reemergence from a self-imposed isolation, Cruise needed to really capture the down-and-out essence of Algren at the film’s opening and also convey his sense of subtle rebirth in Japan. Cruise sadly does neither. He is not given much material to work with–some of the scenes Cruise is given to display his alcoholism and depression are so ridiculously overblown and campy they backfire on Zwick; particularly when Algren orders a Japanese recruit to shoot him in an attempt to show his superiors how unprepared the soldiers are–but Cruise rarely appears to be doing anything original in his performance in the other moments either. It’s Top Gun’s Pete Mitchell again and again, throughout the project.  Along with the very formulaic nature of The Last Samurai’s script, Cruise’s acting gives the project an extremely familiar feel. The scenes involving Algren and Katsumoto comparing cultural differences ala Rush Hour or any other buddy-cop movie did little to change this idea. I was well ahead of the script at all times and rarely surprised by anything that occurred on-screen. Absent any kind of suspense and, consequently, conflict, I spent much of my time watching The Last Samurai simply waiting for something original to happen to the characters. Unfortunately, nothing ever does. The production values on The Last Samurai are of an obviously high quality. The movie looks good, if nothing else. However, this facet of the production wasn’t anywhere near enough to mask the fact that every scene plays out exactly how you expect it to. Unfortunately, merely looking good wasn’t enough to save The Last Samurai… or Cruise. | |||||
