2003 - Rated R - 2 hr 34 min
Director: Edward Zwick
Starring: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, William Atherton, Chad Lindberg, Tony Goldwyn, Masato Harada, Timothy Spall
First of all, on a side note, I never noticed before how Timothy Spall is in everything. Seriously, the man shows up all over the place. I had no clue.
Okay, so he's in this too, but not really in a huge part. So I'll focus on the actual plot. This movie's got the feeling of a Gladiator-like epic, just set in Japan instead. Tom Cruise's Nathan Algren suffers just about as much as Maximus and learns most of his important lessons while imprisoned. An American officer sent to training the Japanese army to withstand rebel Samurai attacks in 1876, Algren is a drunk with a death wish. He gets captured by the Samurai warriors and winds up training with them. When they release him, he's caught between the old and new worlds of Japan, forced to decide which side he'll stand on.
This is a great story, told very well, albeit a bit long. But honestly, it's one movie where so much happens that you don't notice how long it really is. Even having Tom Cruise as the star didn't dissuade me from it (I'm really not a big fan, in case you haven't noticed yet) and I think he does well, capturing the essence of this tortured war hero. Good stuff, all around.
If it hadn't been for the love story it would have really liked this. He should have been falling in love with a culture and a way of life, not a woman. It undermines everything and given that he killed her husband is just plain weird.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the relationship does belittle all of his growth as a character. I hadn't really thought about it like that before.
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