The Scottish Samurai

Billy Connelly has emerged as the latest soul to join Tom Cruise in feudal Japanese adventure, The Last Samurai. The bedraggled Scot will add his sword arm to those of Tony Goldwyn and fellow Brit Timothy Spall as they accompany Cruise on his campaign in the land of the rising sun. Scheduled to begin filming later this year in New Zealand, Japan and the US, The Last Samurai features a feisty Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, a civil war veteran who is shipped off to Japan in the nineteenth century to help train the armies of the Japanese emperor. Aiding the effort to eradicate the last of the samurai, Algren is captured by his foe and subsequently finds himself drawn to the samurai code of honour, as taught by their charismatic leader, Katsumoto. Playing Cruise's long-time comrade-in-arms, Connelly will take the role of Sergeant Zebulah Gant, while Spall takes on linguistic duties as his interpretor and Tony Goldwyn wears the stripes as his commanding officer. Given the fact that we've barely seen a half-decent samurai flick since Kurosawa's day, it will be interesting to see whether Zwick - whose CV includes previously botched action attempts Courage Under Fire and The Siege - can carry make good on the film's potential. If he can acquit himself with anything even vaguely close to the Hack 'n' slash panache demonstrated in films like The Hidden Fortress, we'll be the first to raise a cup of sake in gratitude.