A triumph!!!
Mary
I didn’t like it. We can’t do Kurosawa. But my wife did.
I just saw it. I loved it. I may go again.
Thanks,
Micah
We just got back from seeing it. Enjoyed it very much. It was easily Cruise’s best performance since Jerry Maguire. Watanabe brought a sense of nobility to his role as Katsumoto that was moving.
What didn’t you like about it Jim?
Seth
I thought this movie was great! I lived in Japan for awhile 20 years ago and it brought back memories.
Jon
I really liked it too. Although the beginning was very clichéd. The whole tormented war hero thing has been done to death. However, within the context of the rest of the movie, it still worked well enough.
A.J.
I really liked it too. Although the beginning was very clichéd. The whole tormented war hero thing has been done to death. However, within the context of the rest of the movie, it still worked well enough.
A.J.
But Tom Cruise did it really well ~ I won’t believe it if he isn’t nominated for this one.
Mary
Please don’t read this if you want to see the
movie!!!
Well, I’m in the minority here, which is fine. Glad you’all
enjoyed the film.
I thought that Cruise, whom I like very well, was miscast.
I never thought he was a fellow in the 19th century, he
was new millenium all the way. Wanatabe (sorry, this
will be mispelled) was more like Gandhi than
a samurai. Stories where a lost and misguided Westerner
is redeemed by the nobility and purity of an Asian
culture are getting pretty old for me.
While Kurosawa glorified the samurai, he didn’t
romanticize them–this movie did to an
extent I disliked. Things were made out to be
appealing that I think aren’t, as in ‘Oh, how
sweet it is to disembowel oneself in the
spring, as the cherry blossoms fall into the
fresh red blood!’ I lot of this samurai stuff
found it’s real expression in WWII. The village,
of course, was Shangri-la.
The bad guys were bad guys , you could see them
coming a mile away, and they were unaccountably
stupid bad guys. For example, the Tony Goldwyn
bad guy character is, although a bad guy, a seasoned
calvery officer who has been through the Civil
War and the Indian Wars.
Faced with the manifest fact that the troops he’s
training can’t hit a target at five feet, he nonetheless unaccountably
sends them into combat against seasoned warriors–
despite the desperate objections of the good guy, Tom Cruise.
After all, the enemy is just a bunch of savages…
Nobody who had rode with Custer would be so
dumb. But he was a bad guy…
Cruise survives umpteen battles, attempts on his life,
and finally the anihilation in combat of all the men in his army
except for Wannatabe, whom Cruise
helps disembowel (the cherry blossoms fall
on cue). Remarkable!
He then staggers off to see the Emperor, having just
fought a bloody battle against the Emperor’s army.
How is he not arrested? How does he get off the
battle field alive? How is allowed into the Emperor’s
presence? How is he allowed into the Emperor’s
presence bearing a sword?
The emperor meanwhile discovers he has a spine,
stands up to the bad guys, affirms the good guys,
and sets things right. If he had that in him one
supposes he would have done it before, in the
face of Wanatabe’s desperate appeal to him and arrest,
by the bad guys --but then
there would have been no climactic battle
where thousands die for nothing.
The Emperor at one point earlier asks his teacher and
mentor Wanatabe: ‘What should
I do?’ But Wanatabe refuses to give advice.
‘You are the Emperor, you must guide us…’
Why doesn’t Wanatabe say: ‘OK, here are
some suggestions…first…’ Because he is
Good and Pure, virtually a Saint. As we
know military leaders are like this.
Have you all seen The Seven Samurai? I suppose that may be the greatest movie ever
made. Best
If Tom Cruise is nominated for an Academy Award, then the Oscar becomes as meaningless as it would be if they gave one to Julia Roberts…uh…never mind.
Must agree (with the exceptions, or ties with Throne of Blood and Ran, of course). And please don’t confuse with the cheap “western” imitation.
Interestingly, these truely Japanese “samuraï” movies are inspired by Eschylus and Shakespeare…
Just for the record, my wife still likes the movie. Best
And let’s not forget Yojimbo, on which another very poor imitation film, Last Man Standing (Bruce Willis) was based.
PhilO
Yes, Toshiro Mifune was truly great.
Remember in The Seven Samurai, one of the seven
has become virtually enlightened through the
discipline of swordsmanship. Extraordinary
performance. Waiting to go into combat he
sits quietly and plays with flowers. As the samurai are trying to
find armor to put on the villagers so they can
help fight the bandits menacing the village,
the villagers say, no problem, and bring in
armor that they’ve taken from the bodies
of wounded samurai whom they’ve hunted
down and killed.
The samurai are angry and horrified.
They sit in silence and then the nearly enlightened
samurai says quietly, ‘I’d like to kill every peasant
in this village.’
Not ‘We must forgive these unfortunate people,
grasshopper, they are ignorant of what they do!’
but ‘I’d like tokill every peasant in this village.’
He is, you see, real, not a caricature ‘The Enlightened
Samurai’ but a man who is virtually enlightened.
The man is larger than the role, he doesn’t fit
it perfectly. He doesn’t say what Walt Disney
would have him say. Best
-
I have a lot of trouble just getting all the way through a Tom Cruise movie. Just don’t like the guy. Got through Rainman somehow.
-
I don’t plan to see this movie.
[soapbox]
- I sat through the Extreme Martial Arts program that promised to show the physics of the art (graphics were terrific, the martial artists themselves less so). Near the end, I started yelling at the television when Tom Cruise came on to talk about learning to use the sword and what a spiritual (or whatever) experience it was. He simply hasn’t put in the time to be able to offer a valid opinion. Shallow-minded puppet!
Anyway, I’ve studied just one martial art (tae kwon do) for a bit over 12 years now, and I know I still have a lot to learn. The red light goes on immediately whenever someone takes a month or two to learn a few choreographed moves and the pretends to understand what he (or she) is doing.
Parenthetically, my sensei was a concientious objector during Vietnam. A pacifist martial artist–as it should be. “There is no first strike in martial arts.”
[/soapbox]
M
Last weekend on the History Channel the show “History or Hollywood” covered “The Last Samurai”. Also last month"s National Geographic covered Samurai history. There has been a large bit of romanticizing done here. By the time the movie covers occurs samurai had become priviliged with no purpose, resistant to change , arrogant and often cruel.
Despite that I still think I’d like to get around to seeing the movie. I believe the costumes and scenery will be spectacular and true to the period.
Never saw it, and I can’t get a DVD. I found only Sanjuro–not that I complain, though. Btw, an excellent “bonus” track there has Sergio Leone say he learnt his trade from Kurosawa…
Some of the action is very good.
I like Cruise, personally: ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’
‘Jerry McGuire,’ etc.
But acting talent is funny stuff: talented actors
can be pretty shallow human beings.
There’s a tendency to think that they must
be interesting people.
I was struck by the fact that in the movie Cruise is able to
pick up enough kendo in three months
to be the equal of people who have trained
since they were children. A couple of moments
of getting zen went a long way. But I could
forgive that.
By the way, I saw a movie in which kendo
figured, ‘Snow Falling on Cedars.’
Here I was in a minority, too–
I thought it was wonderful (so did my wife).
Would recommend it very highly;
also great use of music and one
of the most visually lovely films
I’ve ever seen.
P. S. Buddhism figures in The Last Samurai.
Watanabe meditates before a large statue of
the Buddha. This is accurate. Zen took hold in
Japan partly because samurai who meditated
were better swordsmen than those who didn’t.
But the result wasn’t to uplift the samurai
as much as to pervert Buddhism. After WWII,
zen fell into disrepute in Japan, because it
was so associated with militarism.
I saw that Extreme Martial Arts program as well. I actually studied under one of the featured artists (Mike Chat) for a little while. It was probably the worst thirty-five minutes (I couldn’t even watch the whole thing) I have ever spent in front of a television. I just had to get that off my chest.
Seth