Cruise Month - Mini Review: The Last Samurai

Well, we’ve had books, short stories and TV series for Cruise movies to be based upon. But what about real life events? This is the Last Samurai (also, the last Cruise Month review)

Based (once again, loosely) on the Satsuma rebellion of 1877, The Last Samurai was released in 2003 grossing $456m on a $140m budget.

Not really much else to say on this one, let’s take a look

When shaken US army captain, Nathan Algreen (Tom Cruise) is sent to Japan to help train troops to quash a Samurai rebellion, events occur that lead to him being captured by the Samurai. After several months living among their culture and learning their skills and arts, reality pushes the Samurai to a war with Algreen as a front line soldier for them.

A movie like this is rather hard to judge, it’s a war epic but it’s also a historical adaptation, so do I judge it by one, the other or both of these?

As an adaptation of history is where it fairs poorest. With my limited research on the Satsuma rebellion this movie is guilty of outlandishly simplifying the truth about the war to a basic battle of good vs evil. Whilst there are some historical accuracies (Samurai do take their own life rather than be captured) the ultimate themes seem a little too heavy-handed for their own good, with the resolution to that being the biggest culprit. And of course, the Cruise story is entirely added on.

As an epic it fairs much better, although not without it’s problems. Tom Cruise’s character starts off a bit of an *sshole but at least on this occasion we get plenty of backstory as to what had happened to make him so. We see him grow throughout the course of the journey and we are fully behind the character’s choices and motivations.

It’s nice to see that for the parts that required Japanese actors that they used them and the parts were all acted satisfactorily. My biggest issue is with the rather depressing climax. And no, I don’t mean the number of deaths in it. The soldiers that went up against the Samurai all must’ve known they’d be going up against their leader, Katsumodo (Ken Watanabe), so when they finally have him defeated they all lay down their arms, what?

Also, Nathan’s main character shield is somewhat too obvious here. He is literally the only survivor from his side in the entire battle. Sure he’s wearing combat armour but it had been proven even before this point that it was far from infallible.

What I do give credit for is the building of the relationships between the characters. When it comes to the scenes in the Samurai village, I think they’re the best scenes in the movie. Characters outside of the Samurai village are less well developed, which is a bit of a mistake given that the roles they are play are important.

The end message ‘we must look forward but never forget the past’ is an obvious message that should really not have affected the armaments deal with the US.

This is a decent attempt at a war epic and there are much worse movies out there but it’s definitely not my kind of movie

Rating 65/100

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Images used in this review are from The Last Samurai and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use