Eshin Direct

I must say I was pleasantly surprised with The Last Samurai, starring Hollywood’s golden boy, Tom Cruise. Having said that, it’s not such a great compliment since I wasn’t expecting much from this film anyway. What can you expect of an American film that stars Tom Cruise in the land of the Rising Sun.

The story centres around a young Union officer, Nathan Alrgen (Cruise), who is disillusioned with being the great war hero that his people make him out to be. We discover that he spent much time studying and learning the ways of the Native American people before being ordered to slaughter them all. His commanding officer orders him to take a contract in Japan to train the Japanese army of one Japanese politician Omura (played by Masato Harada).

Algren finds himself training the Japanese peasants in the handling rifles and modern day infantry tactics. His role is to prepare them for combat against one samurai lord by the name of Katsumoto (played by Ken Watanabe). Katsumoto is considered a rebel lord in the eyes of those who run the government in Japan, claiming he is being too backward and clinging to the old ways too much. Katsumoto, on the other hand, believes he is serving his emporer with his rebellion.

Needless to say, the first confrontation between Algren’s fresh recruits and Katsumoto’s seasoned samurai goes in favour of the samurai, despite some heroics from Billy Connelly, who plays an Irishman. With Algren’s troops routed, the only one who is able to stand up against four or five samurai, and even succeeding in killing Katsumoto’s brother in law, is Algren.

Katsumoto, working on a dream vision, sees something in Algren that is tied to his destiny. He decides to capture the soldier, and in a little bit of clever matchmaking, forces his sister, Taka, (whose husband Algren just killed) to caring for the wounded soldier (yeah, he did get some scrapes in that fight with all those samurai).

Anyway, cut a long story short, Algren spends his time with Katsumoto in his winter retreat, starts to learn the old ways of the Japanese warrior and feels at place amongst them. He even manages to save Katsumoto’s life. With the spring upon them, he and Katsumoto return to the capital and the political wranglings begin. A law forbidding the samurais¹.

1. As yet another unfinished post from earlier. I don’t think I’ll ever finish it which is probably just as well considering the film was quite long winded [↩]

Tags: film, japanese, movie, Movies, us