Last Samurai
The movie The Last Samurai seems to be historical fiction very loosely based on history, where Tom Cruise ends up fighting in a major Samurai rebellion of the Meiji era. It’s a real tear jerker, co-starring Ken Watanabe, who is kind of the Japanese equivalent of Tom Cruise.
The movie runs to 2h 40m, and is half in subtitled Japanese, so when I went to see it in Elizabeth NJ, I expected the theater to be empty. However, it was a full house. Of local people. The audience applauded throughout, especially when the samurai fought heroically, and at the end.
While I was watching I thought about how the marketing people must have been thinking of the Japanese market. The film gives an extremely idealized and far too sympathetic view of the Samurai class and portrays the Meiji-era modernizers of Japan as soul-less murderers. Lots of talk throughout about the Samurai code of honor, as coy a love interest as love interest can get, and a speech from the emperor on those tricky western influences.
Frankly, the flick sort of reminded me of the rebellion Mishima wrote about in Runaway Horses, except The Last Samurai is what probably what Runaway Horses would be like if it were redone by the Hello Kitty people, if they tried doing an R-rated picture.
The fighting scenes are lots of fun though.
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