Watanabe Making Directorial Debut With WWII Film?

Pajiba says Ken Watanabe may soon make his directorial debut; they also say he's a bad ass, so no matter what happens with 442nd, they're at least half right. Watanabe sprang to America's attention by completely showing up Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, to the point that it crystallized for me what's wrong with every earnest Tom Cruise Oscar-hungry performance: He's trying way too hard to act. Watch Watanabe in that thing...man, he's smooth. And then in Memoirs of a Geisha, which was a pretty average movie, he again stole the show, and in Eastwood's Letters to Iwo Jima, we just had to admit that this guy pretty much knows what he's doing, and he always does more with less. So whatever he's up to next, I'm always ready to give it a look. That, conveniently, includes Inception, which I would have seen, anyway. Now, this 442nd: Pajiba describes it as "the true story of an American-Japanese military unit assembled during World War II and sent on virtual suicide missions in the European theater. For their efforts against the Nazis, that unit go on to become the most decorated unit in American military history." A strange bit of American history, World War II. Even though we had Asian-American soldiers fighting overseas, many of their wives, children, and other family members were in internment camps in the western US. How was that rationalized? And yet, the soldiers served with great distinction on the whole. I hope Watanabe gets a chance to direct; he has a way into his characters most actors try in vain to find, and he makes it seem so natural. That's not an automatic qualifier as a director, but he clearly knows the importance of storytelling through his performances, so it's not a bad place to start.

Comments

[Josh]

If he can transfer half his acting ability into directing, this movie could turn out extremely well.

[rk]

Really not sure how you can criticize Cruise's acting in Samurai, it was terrific. Poor Tom just gets so much hate...