Expletive Defeated

The Last Samurai (2003)

Rating ... D+ (22)

"There is indeed something... spiritual, in this place," stammers Tom Cruise during The Last Samurai, vainly grasping at a sense of awe his film fervently desires but is unable to achieve. No line better summarizes The Last Samurai and its philosophy of employing shortcuts to epic grandeur, but I'll certainly try. Best described as Hollywood's next idea to simultaneously fence-mend foreign relations and draw in the historical epic crowd, The Last Samurai glacially chronicles Tom Cruise's "rise and fall, which were in fact exceptionally minor so he can now experience another rise and fall, which will now appear incredibly epic by comparison!" in the land of the rising sun. More specifically, Cruise agrees to teach imperial troops Civil War era tactics, and after getting his ass handed to him by a group of rebel samurai that he was meant to exterminate, he's taken prisoner and inexplicably allowed to live. In fact, Cruise is so handsome, it's decided that he can become an honorary samurai and learn Bushido. Hi-yah!

The Last Samurai pulls a lot of strings to situate characters in black and white roles. There will be a villain, there will be a noble hero, and if you aren't good then you obviously must be evil. The problem is, rather than allow its characters to carve an original chunk out of a familiar whole, The Last Samurai merely uses the stereotypes as an expository bypass, coasting on what audiences already know given the characters' position in order to make more room for epic staples like drawn-out battles, cherry blossoms (for the pathos), and ninja attacks. If that wasn't bad enough, The Last Samurai can't even figure out exactly what it feels like achieving. Spelled out in history and the film title is the fate of the samurai, and the film treats it with as many conflicting attitudes as possible. It's dramatic! It's glorious! It's ass-kicking! It's slo-mo! It's our hero's ethical cleansing! It's meaningful no really! "The way of the warrior" dictates that it's "honorable to die in battle," explains the code of the Samurai, allowing Watanabe and his cohorts to exit the film with honorable failure. But there's another code at work here, the Hollywood conservation of celebs, which affirms the relatively inexperienced Tom Cruise's eventual survival over that of his newfound cohorts', and the usual happy ending, on top of the film's previous, scattershot commitments of glorious death, spiritual importance, martial arts beatdown, and historical applicability. Simply put, The Last Samurai wants it all, but it's not up to the task of having it.