'Last Samurai' is first-rate Hollywood cliche

Friday, December 05, 2003

By Barry Paris, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

History and film are both replete with sagas of the disillusioned foreign warrior, come to assist the oppressed locals -- after proper initiation into their ways. Lord Byron in Greece, Lawrence in Arabia, "A Man Called Horse," "Dances With Wolves" pop to mind as offhand examples of the brand.

	RATING: R for very violent battle sequences. STARRING: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall, Koyuki. DIRECTOR: Edward Zwick.

Joining that list of consciousness-raised auslanders with a tormented past is Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai," a sweeping military epic full of sound and fury, signifying -- well, sound and fury.

It's the American centennial year of 1876. Cruise is Capt. Nathan Algren, a premature has-been, now reduced to making a few bucks as a sharpshooting carnival attraction -- when not too drunk to perform. Seems he is understandably guilt-ridden about his part in the Indian massacres and forced removals during and after Little Big Horn. With nothing better to do, he accepts an offer from Japanese emissaries to help train that old-fashioned feudal nation's new-fashioned modern army -- replacing swords with guns -- in suppressing the last, fierce internal resistance of the samurai.

Under samurai-in-chief Kasimoto (Ken Watanabe), they're a stubborn lot, these samurai, powerfully devoted during every waking moment to the code of honor, discipline and ancient martial arts that characterize their noble class. They are full of contempt for the callow young conscripts being sent against them, and for the ultimate coward's weapon -- firearms.

Our man Tom, at the end of the first great skirmish, finds himself a seriously wounded prisoner of war. By all rights, he should be executed, but Kasimoto is fascinated by the American's bravery. Male bonding is on the agenda here. So is female caregiving on the part of Taka (the single-named actress Koyuki) -- to her great distress: It is bad enough that Cruise killed her husband in the recent battle. Now, she has been ordered to nurse his killer back to health.

The captain, meanwhile, has a tough existential row of his own to hoe. It's historical as well as developmental ("What happened to the warriors at Thermopylae? Dead to the last man."). He can't help feeling "something spiritual in this place."

We get vague visual hints of this in some bad matte shots of Mount Fuji, but they literally and figuratively lack depth. Decades ago, I was a student of Japanese culture in what used to be called the "Department of Oriental Civilizations" (now Asian studies). That society's unique strangeness stems from the coexistence of Shinto and Buddhism. I think those two great phenomena have been melded and confused in this film, but we have neither the time, space nor brain cells to explicate here.

Suffice to say, director Edward Zwick -- heavily influenced by the great Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and whole body of work -- delivers a fabulous panorama of combat scenes in which his real and ersatz samurai alike prove themselves. The screenplay's cliches are rendered as effectively as possible. Tom Cruise (whom I like, now that nobody else does) is just fine. The music by Hans Zimmer is lushly beautiful.

But that stunning final battle sequence and the hokey cherchez la femme ending are so Yankee-centric. Its rough equivalent would be leaving the heroic figure of Lord Nelson left to preside over the dead at Gettysburg: moving, to be sure -- if geopolitically absurd.

Barry Paris can be reached at 412-263-3859.

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