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Perhaps sensing this, the trailer for The Last Samurai starts off by playing it safe, with the Warner Bros. Studio logo standing in for Cruise. Foreboding Japanese music begins to play — a staccato drumbeat that coincides with flashes of Japanese landscape and rigid Japanese men standing in front of landscaped Japanese gardens. Throughout the first thirty seconds, the trailer takes a stab at — and, I think, succeeds admirably in — letting us know, in no uncertain terms, that this movie takes place in Japan. This accomplished, the trailer then gives us approximately two hundred more shots of various Japanese locales and customs, just in case. Any lingering doubt among the two or three skeptics in the audience now crushed, we can proceed cautiously. The drumbeat picks up tempo, and we are finally given our first glimpse of Tom Cruise, sporting that haircut of his that makes him look like a drunk hobo. He exchanges glances with a passing Japanese swordsman. I assumed that this was supposed to make us aware of some tension between the Japanese man and Cruise — perhaps the Japanese man, like the audience, was angered by Cruise's cavalier attitude to haircuts. An alternative take is that Cruise and the Japanese man have some history here — like one of those romantic comedies where the couples hate each other at first but fall madly in love later, we are perhaps witnessing that embarrassing and awkward "morning after" scene, where Cruise realizes he has been caught with another lover and can't face the Japanese man, and the Japanese man in turn realizes he has allowed himself to be seduced by someone who apparently buys ten dollar haircuts, thus bringing dishonor to his family. One of the first scenes with any sort of violence-centred action at all ( I count these as the only important scenes in any trailer) is one showing two young Japanese boys, about six or seven, fighting with bamboo sticks. Based on this, I assumed Last Samurai was going to an epic film following the lives of two Japanese brothers embroiled in a lifelong blood feud, eventually culminating (as these Japanese movie blood-feuds tend to) in a huge blood-splattered, blade-flashing samurai showdown. As for Cruise's role in all this — well, perhaps he referees the showdown, I couldn't tell you.
I frowned at this point, furrowing my brow in an attempt to understand the movie in any concrete sense. I finally settled on the stance that one of the two Japanese brothers shown fighting with bamboo earlier had cut ties with his brother, vowing to become a short Caucasian man with an aversion to proper grooming, thus angering and estranging himself from his family. The other brother, not to be outdone, had gotten a sex change. The two were now embroiled in an incestuous affair, which — while not quite as potent as the lifelong samurai blood-feud — could still promise some pretty raunchy sex scenes. Unfortunately, a further look at the scene (and plot-confirmation check with Yahoo! Movies) dispelled this conjecture. Damn you, Hollywood! Why must you deny me the therapeutic effects of thinking up wild plots of entire movies on the merit of a single scene? WHY? There are two — count them, two — separate shots of hands, which I assume to be Cruise's, slowing descending to his own hips. I'm not even sure I want to know what's going on there. For the sake of my gag reflex, let's assume he's misplaced his wallet. And pants. And dignity. And my attention. All in all, considering its failure at tension or suspense and its blatant discrimination against young brothers in lifelong samurai show-down sex-change blood-feuds, The Last Samurai only gets two Billy Crystals from me. In the event that Cruise does in fact slide out of a temple in sunglasses and underwear, I will consider adding a Billy Crystal. RATING: |
I
can sympathize with those of you who might think Tom
Cruise to be a less than ideal face for a period drama. Much like the
uranium-dense Keanu Reeves as an innocuous chevalier in Dangerous
Liaisons ("Whoa! This is most totally deceptive, dude!")
or Mira Sorvino as an 18th century princess in Triumph of Love,
the appearance of a lightweight star like Cruise mugging toothy grins
and arching eyebrows across feudal Japan can quickly become more disquieting
than engrossing, if it happens to catch you with your guard down —
like watching a film with a mosquito buzzing around your face, perhaps,
or Mariah Carey practicing scales in your kitchen. One keeps waiting
for Cruise to slide out of a temple door in his sock feet wearing only
Ray-Bans and tighty-whities, or bursting through a tea ceremony at top
speed, leaving samurai waggling their fists and shouting "Maverrrrick!"
at his retreating form.
Sadly,
the boys are not shown again in any prominent context, extinguishing
any idea of a samurai blood-feud super-showdown. Instead, we are given
several rapid sequences mostly involving Cruise and a rather pallid
Japanese young woman doing various things that could demonstrate
either their love for one another, or a furious hunt for ticks and chiggers from Cruise's
matted, gangly hair — it went by too quickly to tell. 