The Last Samurai

By RUSSELL BAILLIE


(Herald rating: * * *)

It's only 30 seconds into The Last Samurai and already the shakuhachi flutes are blowing and the voice-over is intoning, not for the last time, about Japan and history and honour.

It's an omen - a mildly cliched beginning indicating the film's epic intentions. And a sign that it's not exactly out to confound expectations.

It doesn't. It might have some high-minded thoughts about the West-East divide, US imperialism, genocide, patriotism and many other virtues Oscar voters hold dear. Oh and how the ancient arts of war were lost to guns.

And yes, Taranaki does a fine stand-in job for 19th-century Japan, even if it is a bit disarming to see samurai - resplendent in their lovely Ngila Dickson-designed armour - charging out of the ponga ferns. But this is still a Tom Cruise movie in the same way Mission Impossible or Minority Report are Tom Cruise movies.

It's a one-guy-on-the-poster star vehicle designed around scenes to show him acting - in a way that says "Hey, see these glassy eyes, I'm acting here" - and playing the action man.

You can imagine the script by director Zwick and his co-writers had the phrase "slow motion close-up on Tom as he has yet another zen moment" scrawled in the margin once or twice a page.

In case you hadn't already heard the whole story, it's 1876 and Cruise plays a war-weary US 7th Calvary officer Nathan Algren, who has hit the bottle as the result of genocidal guilt regarding the slaughter of some Native Americans (cue repeat flashbacks).

But he's hired to help to defeat Japan's warrior caste by training an army of riflemen to go against sword and spear. Only in his first skirmish he is taken prisoner and while held in benevolent captivity in a village he eventually sides with the samurai.

This means he gets off the turps while getting lessons in swordsmanship, Japanese and leaving his shoes at the door, all of which show he's a remarkably quick study.

He scribbles in his journal, cue more voice-over of lines like "there is indeed something spiritual in this place". He bonds with the head of the clan, Katsumoto, played in highly engaging fashion by Japanese star Wantanabe, even if his character's English is exceptionally good for an isolationist Japanese warlord who refuses to use Western weapons.

With him Algren discusses military history from a perspective that sounds a little ahead of its time: "Custer was a murderer who fell in love with his own legend."

He exchanges meaningful looks at Katsumoto's widowed sister-in-law who has been forced to become Algren's landlady but the love story is restrained for reasons that become clear much later.

Apart from an attack on the village by ninja assassins, which feels like a collision with a completely different movie, possibly Kill Bill, the film's mid-section rides a fine line between enlightened zen calm and boredom. It's all, of course, anticipating a big show-down on the battlefield.

But as with many aspects of The Last Samurai - the obviously digital backdrops of San Francisco and Tokyo, Katsumoto's 1000 year-old temple which looks like it got its floors and columns sanded yesterday - there's something deficient about the battle sequences.

They just aren't that exciting, despite what the ever-rampant soundtrack thinks. Throughout there is the occasional decapitation and inevitable hara-kiri scene but there's something oddly sanitised and bloodless about its violence.

If its laboured efforts to deliver a high-minded, prestige period epic don't come off, it does enough of a impersonation of one to carry you go along for its uneven ride.

And it must be said when Cruise gets yet another slow motion close-up as he has yet another zen moment, he does look pretty cool.

It's just a pity that as the Katana Kid, Cruise the superstar eclipses everything else, including the land of the rising sun.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Ken Wantanabe, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly

Director: Ed Zwick

Rating: M (violence)

Running time:154 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas from Thursday