Pity poor Tom Cruise - he may be one of Hollywood's biggest stars, worked with everyone from Kubrick to Scorsese and have a few bob in the bank, but you can bet that he won't be really really happy until he has an Oscar or two sitting on the mantelpiece. Why else would he produce and star in a film as relentlessly baiting as 'The Last Samurai'? Certainly not to advance the medium, as this resolutely old fashioned 'epic' certainly doesn't do anything new or unexpected, even if it is extremely professionally packaged.
The Cruiser plays American Civil War veteran Captain Nathan Algren, a booze hound who agrees to train the Japanese Emperor's troops in the ways of western warfare. Japan is opening itself up to the west and some of the Emperor's advisors believe that this is the perfect opportunity to exercise their growing influence over the country. Chief amongst the advisors' Machiavellian concerns is the power of the samurai, a group of legendary warriors who refuse to cede to anyone but the Emperor. After a bruising encounter with the samurai, Algren is captured and kept alive by their leader, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Before you can say 'Shogun', Algren discovers that he seems to have more in common with these men than he realised.
As impressive as the battle sequences are - the graceful choreography of one particular encounter on a Tokyo side street is jaw-dropping - there's no escaping the fact that the screenplay is built on a series of cinematic conventions which even Kevin Costner would probably dismiss as being a little too hokey. One of those movies in which narrative fluency and real character development are forsaken in favour of grand old ideals (honour, dignity, heroism) which themselves aren't sufficiently examined, 'The Last Samurai' lacks edge and dimension. It is, if you'll pardon the horrible pun, Cruise on auto-pilot.
