|
Movie Review: 'The Last Samurai'
by Feric Jagger
7 December 2003
The best and quickest way I can describe this movie is: "Dances with Wolves" with Japanese instead of Injuns. It's about, what I term, the XenoChrist -- a white man who justifies the ways of foreigners to whites. Movies like this make me envision a future where the only flag a white man is allowed to salute is one on a white background (for surrender) with a kneeling or supine figure on it and above him written in Latin (or Swahili or whatever) is the motto "Any Cause Not My Own".
Tom Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a drunken gun for hire. He's an EWC "evil white capitalist" who makes his living by selling (*gasp*) guns! Now you see what a sinner he is. He drinks to forget having fought under that wicked white man General Custer. He has to stay drunk or he'll remember how he shot down peaceful and defenseless Indians (women and children) at the service of Custer.
He takes a job in Japan helping to "Westernize" (boo-hiss) the noble Japanese people in the art of American warfare with modern weapons. It's disappointing because I much prefer the Nathan Alger at the beginning of the movie to the one at the end. He's brash, cocky, independent and confident. In an early engagement, he is attacked and captured by the samurai (who he's trying to help wipe out). He is brought back as their prisoner and from there the grand transformation begins. The independent Nathan slowly gives way to the touchy-feely Nathan.
He eventually falls in love with a Japanese widow and her family (message: love those not your own and fight against your own kind). There are two lines in the movie which perfectly fit the anti-white theme. At one point, Nathan's ex-commanding officer, Col Bagley, is in an argument with Nathan regarding the latter's stubornness and -- out of the blue -- says, "What have you got against your own kind?" Strange because that line did not seem to fit the scene which had nothing to do with Nathan being for or against whites. It seemed to be just "stuck in there" to let the viewer know Nathan's new beliefs. In another scene, Nathan is asked by his Japanese girlfriend, "Would you defend us even if the whites came against us?" Which he answers in the affirmative. Strange that she asked that because again, it didn't seem to fit with the conversation at hand. There was ZERO chance that whites would attack them. So what was that line in there? So we can learn to identify with the hero's anti-racialist leanings.
Toward the end of the film we see Nathan kneeling before the Japanese emperor and I had to ask myself, could I ever imagine Tom Cruise taking a film where he would kneel in honor before another white man? Of course not.
Personally, I think its sad that this movie had to include so much anti-white sentiment. I think it would've been a better movie had there been no whites in it at all -- like the beautiful film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which I loved.
"The Last Samurai" is a gorgeously filmed movie. The settings are inspiring and appear realistic to the time period. I think this could have easily been a great film had the screenplay not been written by people named Herskovitz, etc.
Better to avoid this one.
FERUC JAGGER
|