i too found myself compelled to watch this the other night.

here’s an interesting stat i learned after watching it: in the uk, about 12m people go to bed before half ten (3.9m people saw the first half of the film, which was a 19% audience share but only 2.5m people bothered with the second half, which was a 29% audience share - so the total tv audience fell from 20.5 to 8.6m between the first and second half. aren’t statsistics truly fascinating?)

anyway. back to the film. i do have an aversion to tom cruise, based on seeing far and away. i can forgive him magnolia and eyes wide shut, but nothing else. there is so much wrong with the last samurai that it’s just not possible to know where to begin. it’s writing by numbers. everything that happens is obvious. nothing takes you by surprise.

i guess my biggest gripe about it is how the story is really about america, in a very sickly knd of way, with a real liberal whiney twist to it. thus we get one good american (cruise) fighting bad americans (his commander, the guys trying to cut the trade deal). it’s the fight for the soul of the american dream. with japan there just for a bit of ethnic porn.

“I actually found myself agreeing with the ebil dude and wondering why Cruise hated his own people so much?”

that’s easy actually. what’s the right’s typical reponse to the left in america? it’s “why do you hate your own country so much”.

so here we get the liberal’s response to this question. typical of liberals though, it’s so up its own arse that the point is buried and has to be explained.

rather sad, really.