John Martz

The Last Samurai: A Review

Last night I saw Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai.  For those who don’t know what this film is about, I will tell you.

It’s the late 19th Century and Tom Cruise plays Lt. John Dunbar, “Friend to the Savages”, as he is affectionately known due to his adament befriending of such filthy wild cultures as Indians, the Japanese, and people from Windsor.

After being sent to Japan to teach their floundering people how to be civilized and use proper machine-tooled weaponry like rifles and pepper spray, Lt. Dunbar discovers and falls in love with Japanese cuture.

This is when he discovers chopsticks, Pokémon, and what the Japenese people call ‘Nintendo’.  At first he is unskilled and is even beat by small children who point and laugh at his big nose and impossibly white teeth.  But with much practice, Lt. Dunbar soon masters and conquers a video game called “Starfighter”.

It turns out this was a test, and he meets Centauri, an alien Samurai warrior played by Graham Green, who invites him into his tribe.  “Please save our culture,” Centauri pleads.  “Our nation is being tainted with Western ideology thanks to our 3-year old Emperor, Pu Yi.  Only, you, a white man, can show us the true way!  Also, we will name you Dances with Wolves.”

“I will help you,” says Lt. Dunbar.  He spends the remaining weeks training the small army of Japanese know-nothings how to fight and strategize.  “What we lack in numbers,” explains Tom Cruise, “we make up for in foolhardyness.”

It is the final battle at Helm’s Deep between the 300 Samurai and the 10,000 Mexican Banditos that had everyone in the theatre on the edges of their seats.  Graham Green dies an honorable Klingon death by performing Harry Caray and when Dances with Wolves finally emerges from the bloody battlefields as the only survivor, he looks into the eyes of Claudius, the Head of the Banditos, played by Eli Wallach, and says with his last breath, “I truly am the Last of the Mohicans,” and stabs Claudius in the face with ninja stars.

It is a heartwarming tale of cultural misunderstanding and how one white man made all the difference and single-handedly saved Japan.