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The Last Samurai 14 January 04
Section: article
Categories: Film / in-a-cinema
What a pleasant surprise.
From a martial arts point of view it is just fine.
The depiction of the smug, imperious, patronizing and arrogant U.S. ambassador and army officer and their imperial policies mirror current events: think of Rumsfeld and any member of the military upper echelon of the U.S. regime. Not to mention the swarms of political sycophants that surround them in the film, and their counterparts in U.S. client regimes.
The movie does have a certain Robin Hood thread and resolution, which serves to harness it into the mainstream movie formula and keep it from being a radical movie, but in the current political context this is a progressive movie. The context is the growing atmosphere of political repression in the U.S. intended to support a bullying, genocidal policy which stretches from (before) the attempted extermination of the Native Americans, through Vietnam and now Iraq. The protagonist in the movie follows his conscience, switches sides and fights the good fight. I have no illusions about Imperial Japan and its genocide, but this movie resonates in the context of U.S. imperialism and culture, which is how it should be judged, in my opinion.
The protagonist’s story echoes stories of heroic GIs in the Vietnam War who resisted and even turned against their officers, the army, in creative ways, and in some cases went to the other side, notwithstanding the delusional fantasies since then of the MIA POW jingoists.
And the depiction of the protagonist’s alcoholic anguish at what he did in the service of his government is moving, for me.
Title: The Last Samurai
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Starring: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada Koyuki
Written by: John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz & Edward Zwick
Cinematography: John Toll
Music: Hans Zimmer
Year: 2003
Production: Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Scott Kroopf and Tom Engelman
Cinema: Turm Kino, Frankfurt, Germany
- Title: The Last Samurai
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