So I caught a sneak preview of The Last Samurai last night with a good friend. My verdict: it's surprisingly fun pop entertainment, exciting and interesting to watch (at least until the ending...but more on that in a minute). However, it marks the end of the extraordinary series of Tom Cruise "problem pictures" that was inaugurated with Eyes Wide Shut. The Last Samurai is good, but resoundingly conventional. It isn't going to make any Worst of All Time lists, and that's a shame. For all of their problems, Eyes Wide Shut and, to a lesser extent, Vanilla Sky were movies that taught you how to watch them as they went along. The Last Samurai is as safe as Seabiscuit.

For all my efforts in defending Tom Cruise, however, I have to admit one thing: the guy has a problem with endings. Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report and The Last Samurai all end with five minutes of mostly unnecessary dialogue determined to tie up every loose end. In the past, I've defended these torrents of closing exposition as the necessary concession for making complex, slippery movies. However, The Last Samurai doesn't justify that defense: the ending just doesn't work. More accurately, the film contains one ending that does work, and very well at that, but then inexplicably coasts on for just one more scene. If you see the movie, you'll know the moment I'm talking about.

But maybe I'm being too rough on this movie. Any other actor and I'd have been generally well pleased: it has some thrilling action, an endlessly interesting story, and only a hint of interracial romance. Oh, and a Japanese baby. Is he cute? As David Mamet once wrote, he's as cute as a Chinese baby.