kartooner

I saw The Last Samu­rai the other night and must say that I was sur­pris­ingly impressed. That’s not to say I didn’t think I was going to enjoy the movie — it’s just that I’m not a fan of Tom Cruise per­say. His pre­vi­ous movies haven’t exactly sparked or peaked my inter­est due to his bleak performances.

Despite this pit-nicking, his per­for­mance in The Last Samu­rai was intense to say the least. His range of emo­tion exerted in var­i­ous sequences made for a stun­ning per­for­mance. Espe­cially impres­sive was Ken Wantabe, a famous actor from Japan, who accord­ing to var­i­ous resources has been play­ing samu­rai war­riors for the past 20 years. He is Japan’s Tom Hanks respec­tively and because of his excel­lent per­for­mance you really feel for the character.

The movie, directed by Edward Zwick, is a mix­ture of intense, epic emo­tion and typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood writ­ing (campy and witty dia­logue and over-played emo­tion, etc.) How­ever, what makes the movie shine alto­gether is not only the per­for­mances but the cin­e­matog­ra­phy — which iron­i­cally the bulk of the film was shot in New Zealand and not Japan. This deci­sion was partly due to the fact that Japan has dra­mat­i­cally evolved since the mid to late 1800s. Shoot­ing on loca­tion in New Zealand allowed the crew to dress the scenes in accor­dance to that era.

While not as epic and rich as Return of the King, The Last Samu­rai still deserves a view­ing, if not two. The inter­ac­tions between the char­ac­ters in addi­tion to the Bud­dhist phi­los­o­phy of the Asian cul­ture make for an enter­tain­ing if not some­what spir­i­tual experience.