The Last Samurai

You know that movie trailer that goes, "In a land where … a man who … finds a people that … and a hero is born" Well, imagine that expanded into a 2 1/2-hour film, with Tom Cruise doing the voiceover parts. Now dumb it down a little. That movie you’ve just imagined would be tremendously more intelligent than The Last Samurai. Cruise plays Captain Nathan Algren, an American sent to late-19th-century Japan to wax philosophical about the noble Japanese. After getting captured and going native, he learns to love bathing and staring off into space and betraying his former comrades. Some great battle sequences don’t make up for the boring non-violent parts of this middle-brow attempt to pander to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but if you want to see a director get down on his knees and beg for an Oscar, this is the one film to watch.