Life is good for Tom Cruise
Actor in yet another No. 1 movie, 'Last Samurai'
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Tom Cruise at the "Last Samurai" premiere. The star is in a rarefied circle of performers who can command $20 million a movie.
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LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- It's good being Tom Cruise right now as his new movie, Oscar hopeful "The Last Samurai," is released in North America. And it's even better now that the movie has taken the top spot at the weekend box office.
The actor is among Hollywood's top paid leading men who can earn over $20 million a movie if he wants, but who often commands even more if he can stake a claim to a percentage of the film's box office receipts as a film producer. And since his 2001 divorce from Nicole Kidman, the 41-year-old father of two has taken up with Spanish beauty Penelope Cruz.
"You know, when you start out ... you're thinking 'will you ever work again and what's going to happen,' and (now) I'm having a blast," Cruise said about his career at a recent news conference.
"I'm really having a blast." And he laughs.
There was a time that Cruise, like many a young Hollywood actor, struggled to find work. But those days are long gone after box office and critical hits that began with 1983's "Risky Business" and include "Top Gun," "Rain Man," "Jerry Maguire" and "Mission: Impossible."
Embarking on an epic
"Samurai," about a U.S. Civil War veteran who travels to Japan in 1876 to train the Emperor's army in modern war, may be the next Cruise movie to make that list.
Earlier this week, the U.S. National Board of Review picked it as one of 2003's top movies and gave its best director honor to the film's Ed Zwick.
In "The Last Samurai," Cruise plays an American officer who goes to Japan to help modernize the Japanese army and falls in love with the nation's culture.
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The 95 year-old non-profit group's best actor award went to Sean Penn for "Mystic River" and "21 Grams," but don't count Cruise out for American filmmaking's top award, the Oscar, in February.
Early lists like the National Board of Review's have mixed success at foreshadowing Oscar wins, and Oscar voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences like sweeping sagas such as "Samurai." Cruise is the first to admit his other award hopeful films like "Maguire" lacked the scope of "Samurai."
"Here I am, and I haven't really found, or made, an epic film," Cruise said. "This movie is going to take you to a different place and a different time."
The actor plays Captain Nathan Algren who, after a valorous career in the Civil War, has grown disenchanted with the Army's conflicts with American Indians. The honor he once saw in men of power has been replaced by distrust and dishonor.
The U.S. government, which wants to sell weapons to the Japanese who are modernizing their army, supports an effort to send him overseas to train Japanese troops, and given the money the Emperor's men are paying, Algren takes the job.
Once there, he learns that the last leader who lives by the ancient traditions of the samurai is revolting against government efforts to open Japan to the modern age.
Swords and guns
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Cruise attended the "Samurai" premiere with girlfriend Penelope Cruz.
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When Katsumoto (played by Japanese star Ken Watanabe) leads his men into battle against Algren's troops, the American is captured after the samurais' swords prove mightier than the Emperor's new guns. Over the winter, Algren is indoctrinated into the life of a samurai and the ancient ways of Bushido -- the code of honor that governs the samurai life.
By spring, Algren has regained his sense of duty to causes higher than simply men and their governments, and he and Katsumoto join forces against the Emperor's men.
"There is something very moving in watching the convulsions of society and culture trying to change. People want to hold onto what is valuable, yet they have to live with what is inevitable," said Zwick.
The director said "Samurai" would have suffered if Cruise had not immersed himself so deeply into the Algren role, and Cruise admits he did not think he could handle the part, initially. But once committed, he threw himself into it.
"I can't do something halfway, three-quarters, nine-tenths. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to go all the way," he said. "I love what I do."
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
