With the beautiful ex-model Koyuki as Taka, the widow who takes care of Algren.

NEWYORKER: The Last Samurai

The book is punctuated by passages on the roach from works like Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm.

FORBES: Digital Rules

Redeemed by discipline and honor, Algren trains as a samurai and, in the end, fights alongside the great man.

NEWYORKER: The Last Samurai

From 1947 to 1964, she wrote 300 letters to Algren.

ECONOMIST: French muses

She weeps profusely after partings, hugs herself at the memory of his strong embrace and agonises over her sense of duty to Sartre and her work when Algren asks her to marry him.

ECONOMIST: French muses

During one of them, the closest thing in the movie to a love scene, Algren's eyes are opened wide by Taka (the Japanese actress and model Koyuki), a taciturn beauty who washes his wounds and nurses him back to health.

WSJ: Cruise Fights for Honor in 'Last Samurai'

His Algren is more a collection of attitudes and behaviors than a specific, spontaneous character. (He indicates several attitudes by narrowing his eyes.) And those martial sequences give way to extended dawdles, distinguished mainly by authentic period details and period pacing.

WSJ: Cruise Fights for Honor in 'Last Samurai'

Yet it doesn't go far enough for us to feel much of anything as Algren goes through all sorts of hell on a mission most improbable, first as Katsumoto's captive (he learns to speak Japanese in a matter of months), and later as his acolyte, ad hoc strategist and joyous -- except not joyous enough -- companion in arms, if need be to the death.

WSJ: Cruise Fights for Honor in 'Last Samurai'