This is going to be a confused post. 90% of what John says is not only Right, but factually correct. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie. Why?
I think it comes down to Glass Half-Fullism the definition of Acceptable Junk Food. Yes, this movie was 90% empty calories, but that artificial cheese flavoring really did it for me. Here are some of the ingredients I found redeeming:
--an acceptably accurate portrayal of Japanese culture. Yes, yes, the
emperor scenes and a lot of other stuff was Wrong, but the daily life
stuff, much of the samurai code stuff was ... OK. For Hollywood and
Cruise, that is a miracle. (We had just seen Kill Bill, which I found
utterly repulsive so I had low expecations.)
--No Bad Japanese. This was not Kill Bill. I mean bad like English in
dubbed-Hong-Kong-movies is really bad, only not funny.
--Looked nice.
--Hey, tactics in the battle scenes! Still doesn't make sense, but
not 100% content-free!
--Yes there was a love interest - but no love scene. Victory!
--Cruise is upstaged by Watanabe.
--The battles and fights show real suffering (although this is
clearly not Private Ryan). An improvement over Hollywood's usual
soft-porn violence.
Actually, the movie had more merit than this. What I liked was the idea that you stick with a cause if you think it is right, even if it means you get utterly destroyed. Maybe it was something I read into the movie rather than something that was developed. It certainly wasn't fully developed, and it was co-opted heavily in the ending. "What cause?" was also not examined carefully. But I hadn't expected Hollywood to understand this part of Japan; in Hollywood, it is OK to be ornery and stubborn – a maverick or whatever – but in the end you *win*.
Powered by hypermail