maryannfarley

It's hard to fathom how Jonathan Rhys Meyers ends up in movies like these. He's so damn talented, so handsome, has that "it" factor, and yet time and again he ends up in pure trash. I mean, this guy was the lead in Matchpoint! It's almost like when I see him advertised in a film now, I assume it will be abysmal.

An actor can do a few clunkers without self destructing, but Rhys Meyers seems intent on blowing up what could have been a total A list career.

Scorsese never makes an unwatchable movie, but I was troubled by so much of this film feeling like "European Christian guys good, Japanese Buddhist guys bad." Yes, the Japanese tortured Christians during this time, but Scorsese leaves out huge chunks of history that can explain at least some of the behavior.

During this period, the Portuguese were using missionaries as a vehicle to make inroads into the Japanese market, and they even trafficked in Japanese peasants in the global slave trade. So Japan wasn't refuting Christianity solely on religious grounds. It was a political rebellion, as well, which is understandable when chunks of your population disappear onto slave ships.

But of course for Scorsese to tell his tale, he must make it all about religion, but even on that level, I've no idea what point he's trying to make. Towards the end, when we actually hear the voice of God as a narrator, I knew he had really lost his way. If you can't tell your story just through the narrative, without strange voices stepping in from who knows where, do you even have a story to tell?

And then he dedicates the film to "the Japanese Christians and their pastors." WTF? Nice swipe at the Japanese on the way out, Marty. Yes, I know you made Kundun (about Buddhism), which I loved, but that was one seriously uncomfortable tribute on top of an already uneasy film. Not my favorite in the Scorsese canon.