TommyTwista

This is a horribly directed film - the polar opposite of the brilliant Buffalo 66. The sole redeeming feature is the heart felt brilliant acting by Vincent Gallo. It's basically a bizarre form of experimental star vehicle.

The film's image and editing was very conventional, but Charlize Theron was phenomenal. A true actress, she completely submerges herself in the role. Christina Ricci, whose role gave her less to work with, gave a solid supporting performance.

I found this film surprisingly good, despite the luke-warm reviews (e.g. Variety). The storyline was fairly predictable, but that's fine for this type of genre piece. Tom Cruise is, in my opinion, a fantastic one-trick-pony actor. He portrays the testosterone filled American Alpha-male in all his films, and does it superbly in this one. And yet, it is not pro-American. In fact, it is distinctly anti-American in terms of foreign policy commentary. Only an actor such as Cruise could be capable of pulling this off while still being considered a good American.

The similarities with Dances with Wolves are clearly there, but does this really matter? It's been a long time since Dances and this was a fun story anyway.

The only negative comment that I have on this picture is that Cruise could have let this be more about Katsumoto, who represented the real-life Saigo Takamori, rather than about a completely fictional American military advisor turned rebel. It was only a 1/3 of the way into the film before I realised that Cruise wasn't the Last Samurai and that led me to research the history of the true Last Samurai afterward.