:
Phil Chong,
Joel Kramer,
Larry "Warlock" Lam,
more...
:
Edward Zwick,
Edward Zwick
see all cast/crew...
: 
: Warner Home Video
: Foreign, Costume Drama/Period Piece, Adventure, Ninja, Samurai, Civil War
: English, French
: English, Spanish, French
see additional details...
|
|
Edward Zwick returned to the director's chair for the first time since 1998's The Siege with this sweeping period drama set in 19th-century Japan. After centuries of relying on hired samurai for national defense, the Japanese monarchy has decided to do away with the warriors in favor of a more contemporary military. Tom Cruise stars as Nathan Algren, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War who is hired by the Emperor Meiji to train an army capable of wiping out the samurai. But when Algren is captured by the samurai and taught about their history and way of life, he finds himself conflicted over who he should be fighting alongside. Billy Connelly, Tony Goldwyn, and Ken Watanabe co-star. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Special Features:
- Commentary by Director Edward Zwick
PLEASE NOTE: This disc contains the feature film.
|
|
| To me I prefer Shogun to this movie
by WZoller
August 20, 2004 - 11:43 AM PDT
|
|
|
1 out of 4 members found this review helpful
|
| If you enjoy Japanaese history and culture, you will enjoy this movie. However, I still think Shogun is a better movie. Ken Watanabe was excellent Supporting actors are excellent. Tom Cruise seems too intense in a lot of scenes. |
| Dances with Samurai
by kiume
June 3, 2004 - 6:19 PM PDT
|
|
|
11 out of 12 members found this review helpful
|
The Last Samurai is an enjoyable, big-budget Hollywood extravaganza, if less than original in plot and theme. It looks gorgeous, sounds gorgeous, is executed competently in most respects. Tom Cruise even correctly conjugates "to be" in Japanese (something Richard Chamberlain never managed). True, there are a few tense moments when you fear you might have to start taking the whole thing seriously.
But not to worry, because that's when the ninjas show up! What Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is to Hong Kong wuxia actioners, The Last Samurai is to chambara eiga, the samurai sword fight genre Akira Kurosawa retooled from John Ford and Howard Hawks westerns, and reinvented once more by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. It is a heroically self-important morality tale, so stunningly anachronistic that it qualifies more as fantasy.
The last time Hollywood made a big deal about an epic event in Japanese history (prior to 1941), the aforementioned Richard Chamberlain was helping Toshiro Mifune establish the Tokugawa Shogunate and unify Japan under a single, authoritarian regime. A quarter century and 250 years later, we find Tom Cruise alongside Saigo Takamori, the man largely responsible for overthrowing the Shogunate and ushering in Japan's modern age.
Now, Mifune's character in Shogun is called Toranaga, not Tokugawa Ieyasu. And in The Last Samurai, Ken Watanabe's character is called Katsumoto, not Saigo. Whatever. Except that, back in 1600, there simply weren't that many shipwrecked English pilots hanging about the Edo court bending Ieyasu's ear (unlike Cruise's Algren, a pure fiction, Chamberlain's Blackthorn was based on the real Will Adams).
And following the Meiji Restoration there was only one Satsuma Rebellion (the War of the Southwest, as it's called in Japan). And definitely only one Saigo Takamori. It's sort of like making a movie about Valley Forge and calling General Washington General Smith, you know, lest anyone object to your fictional inventions being passed off as facts.
Clavell mostly avoids meddling in verifiable history, mentioning the decisive Battle of Sekigahara only in an afterword. And his 16th century Englishman was exchanging one barely post-medieval society for another. What is more difficult to swallow is that Cruise's enlightened U.S. Army veteran would find his redemption amongst the followers of an unegalitarian, feudal order.
Cruise is channeling another burdened white man, Kevin Costner and his Lieutenant Dunbar from Dances with Wolves. "Dances with Samurai," let's call it. Except we're not dealing here with the politically correct mythologies of the American West, but with well-documented history. Edward Zwick's thinly-veiled, hagiographic account provides no good idea, other than the repeated mantra about samurai "honor," what the war was about.
While Saigo-the-warrior represented the ideals of "traditional" bushido (itself invented to justify the existence of a warrior class with no wars to fight), Saigo-the-revolutionary could not ignore the social and political corruption two centuries of feudalism had produced. He helped push through reforms that effectively spelled the end of the samurai as protected class, even before the edicts on carrying weapons were promulgated.
So why did he start the Satsuma Rebellion? He didn't, no more than Robert E. Lee started the Civil War. When the shooting started, Like Lee, Saigo chose his "country" (Satsuma) over his nation. One suspects as well that Saigo seized the opportunity for that glorious final battle he had waxed poetic about his entire adult life. Zwick almost gets that right, too, but then ruins it by dressing everybody up in period 16th century costumes.
Imagine General Pickett at Gettysburg outfitting his men like medieval knights and charging the Union line sporting lances instead of guns. Hey, I'm not saying it wouldn't look totally cool. But Saigo's 25,000 man army was equipped with western military hardware raided from government arsenals. And to demonstrate his loyalty to the Emperor, Saigo wore an Imperial Army uniform throughout the campaign.
Outnumbered and greatly outgunned, Saigo managed to drag the fighting out for six months. There was no charge of the "Noble six hundred," as Tennyson immortalized the fate of 13th Light Brigade. Popular accounts have Saigo committing seppuku and being beheaded by one of his retainers before their positions were overrun. A subsequent autopsy concluded that he was too injured to carry out the first part of the ritual.
Again, to give credit where it's due, Zwick does partly manage to illustrate why Saigo Takamori remains such a revered historical figure in Japan. But only partly. You'd never know it from The Last Samurai, but some of Saigo's most notable contributions to the Meiji Restoration were his diplomatic efforts, his willingness, when the Shogunate capitulated, to accept something other than unconditional surrender.
The goal of the Satsuma rebels had been to march to Tokyo and present their complaints to the Meiji leadership. But they never even made it off the southern island of Kyushu. The conflict exhausted the national budget and killed thousands of soldiers on both sides. But the last land battle fought on the Japanese "mainland" ended without a return to the devastating civil wars depicted in Kurosawa films such as Kagemusha and Ran.
As such, it provided a reassuring conclusion to a very dramatic and at times politically perilous affair, and the Meiji government did not let slip such a golden opportunity. In 1889, Saigo was posthumously pardoned and promoted. He was declared a national hero, if a tragic national hero, and those are often the best kind. |
|
|
More reviews for titles in this product:
|
|
|
Your cart
moviegakusei
badbadrubberpiggy
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.