The Last Samurai (Full Screen Edition)
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Chad Lindberg, Ken Watanabe, Ray Godshall Sr., Tom Cruise, William Atherton Director: Edward Zwick Brand: Warner Brothers DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 154 minutes DVD Release Date: 2004-05-04 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Warner Home Video |
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Movie Reviews of The Last Samurai (Full Screen Edition)
Movie Review: Beautiful and solid, but not great
Summary: 3 Stars
In The Last Samurai, director Ed Zwick creates a beautiful epic that alternates wildly between almost over the top and just perfect. Perhaps it was the effort to keep the dark balanced with the light that lead Zwick astray in the opening and closing scenes. Either way, the sad first and last impression we have is of characatures rather than characters.
What a shame that these weak bookends embrace such a solid middle act. Tom Cruise, as a recovering cynical ex-soldier Nathan Algren, does finally triumph, returning a solidly intimate performance. His interactions with the people of the remote villiage where he is kept, half prisoner half patient, are both touching and extremely pleasant to look at. Though almost painfully intimate, Algren's confrontations with and concessions to Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), Taka (Koyuki), and the sons of the village are almost more epic in nature than the great battles that follow. Each face fills the screen just long enough to give us riveting portraits that are at once immediate and deep.
It is thanks to such artistry that when the final battle comes, with its emphasis on process rather than product, we believe and care about what happens.
Certainly this film is worth watching more than once. However, I'm not sure it will be one I'll remember a decade from now, and in that sense, it isn't quite epic.