47 Ronin

It’s safe to say that samurai films aren’t as popular as they were years prior. Being roughly the equivalent of westerns or swashbuckling films for Japan, samurai films (more commonly referred to in Japan as Chanbara) were all the rage during the 20th century, with their mostly dramatic stance on psychologically scarring epics which featured heavy themes, mentally broken characters, often dark and violent plot lines, and sword-striking action. With Japanese filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi influencing western films, they were a successful genre until the early 1970s when its overexposure on television and the continuing decline of the Japanese film industry stopped a majority of the genre’s production. Nowadays, it’s a pretty rare sight to see a samurai film, especially in countries outside of Japan, and 47 Ronin is probably one of the reasons why. In late medieval Japan, a half-Japanese half English outcast named Kai (played by Keanu Reeves) is raised by the lord of the Akō Domain, Lord Asano (played by Min Tanaka) despite his mixed heritage, which causes hatred from his son, Ôishi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada) and his loyal samurai warriors. After an incident where Asano is hypnotized by a witch named Mizuki (played by Rinko Kikuchi) into trying to kill lord Kira (played by Tadanobu Asano), he is forced to commit seppuku (basically ritualistic suicide) which leaves his samurai’s master-less (turning them into ronin), and his daughter Mika (played by Ko Shibasaki) with no other choice than to marry lord Kira in order to unite their lands now that there’s is without a lord. Realizing that Kira planned the events in order to gain control of Akō, Kai, Ôishi and the remaining ronin come together to seek their revenge on the man who killed their lord, stole their lord’s daughter, and destroyed their honor. Being one of Hollywood’s biggest bombs of 201, only grossing $151 million against its $175-225 million budget, 47 Ronin failed to please audiences or critics when it came out. The movie in general feels like a traditional samurai film that has been ‘’Americanized’’ to the point where the Western elements overshadow the traditional roots of the genre, and kill whatever good will could’ve come from this idea

The story itself is actual based on an incredibly important moment in Japanese history, as the forty-seven rōnin is an 18th century historical event in which a band of leaderless samurai avenged their lord’s death. It’s a story that has been retold and acknowledged throughout the ages, being immortalized through various plays and even films. The 2013 version is the only film to be told outside of Japan and is unfortunately probably going to be a majority of people’s introduction to the story. This version of the story constructed by Chris Morgan and Walter Hamada does feature fictionalized fantasy elements, but it does at least keep the meat of the story intact, keeps the names of all the people the same, and allows it to play out pretty closely to its original narrative (albeit loosely and much less complicatedly). It does keep to the original flow of the tale which can be pretty noticeable as some elements feel a bit out of the ordinary for a typical Hollywood action movie (the ending specifically). Inserting elements like witches and trolls into this world doesn’t have to be an automatic failure on the movie as fictionalized elements don’t ruin a true story if the main message and spirit of the story is still clear, but the magical elements feel incredibly unneeded for what this movie hopes to achieve and present. Everything with the Witch and her powers, creatures like trolls and demons, even Keanu as the lead add nothing to the legend or to this movie, almost like they were included in because western audiences wouldn’t want to see an action movie in Japan without something magical put in somewhere. This movie had a lot of risk going into it, especially considering that this was director, Carl Rinsch’s, first movie (as he originally just worked on blurbs for brands) and this inexperience can be felt when watching the film. The pacing for the film is pretty rapid because of its shallow nature, not allowing any moments to really sink in and instead just keeps rushing past big scenes to keep the plot going, and despite how watered-down the tale has become, it still doesn’t have time to feel intriguing or even that faithful. While the real story has a lot of elaborate, even interesting, steps to how the plan was constructed, this movie feels too traditional Hollywood and goes for loud and epic as opposed to calculated and quietly important. It fails to mirror how a real samurai movie would handle this kind of story, and therefore feels very disconnected from its genre.

The inclusion of a majority Asian-oriented cast is a welcome change for the time period and feels pretty necessary for a story so beloved and rooted in the Japanese culture, but even that isn’t handled perfectly either. Having the main star be Keanu Reeves feels like a forceful hint of star-power in order to get western audiences in, but while Keanu isn’t Japanese, he at least looks like he could fit in that environment okay. The real issue lies is that everybody’s acting feels pretty off, which feels like it comes from the directing and the screenplay written by Morgan and Hossein Amini. Everybody has this really dull, lifeless and stilted way of delivering their lines which makes it very hard to get interesting in any of these characters, not helped out by how bland and characterless they are written as. The shallowness stretches so far that not a single character in this film has a defined personality (barely any of them even have memorable or distinct lines), they just exist to move the plot forward and nothing else. It doesn’t really take the time to flesh out most of the characters, even though some of them were real people, and the fictionalized ones are equally as uninterested regardless, so no one is spared. It’s almost laughable how despite being a two-hour long action movie, no character has any sense of charm, charisma, or even just some basic level of memorability. They are just chess pieces which are used to retell this story, and the poor uninterested acting and cliched character direction makes that even harder to get through. While some of these Asian actors are familiar and have done better stuff elsewhere like the previously mentioned names and even some who are just sprinkled in the background like Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Masayoshi Haneda and Gedde Watanabe, this was not a good example of anyone’s skills. The only one that is okay in terms of acting and the only character that is enjoyable to watch is Rinko Kikuchi as the witch. She still doesn’t do much or have much personality, but against everybody else, she feels like the only one whose scenes leave any impression as well as the only one who looks like she’s having any sort of fun with her role. On the other end of that spectrum, Reeve’s character feels very pointless in this film; only serving to waste time on generic romance drama and take time away from developing the actual characters that could have been interesting, not helped out by the fact that he isn’t even from the original story, he’s just a self-insert most likely just to get some familiar western actor in the film.

One of the few things that this movie was praised for was its visuals and its fight scenes, two elements that are usually handled well in most samurai movies and even action movies of this type in general. Overall, those two elements are some of the only parts that mostly work, but even that comes with its obvious downsides. The fact that this movie relies on bigger, almost monster-like battles for the final act (feeling very akin to something like Lord of the Rings) which doesn’t leave room for the more down-to-earth, close contact sword-fighting which usually works so well in these type of films, is pretty disheartening. When they do clash swords, it does look nice with quick strikes and even some decent choreography by John Mathieson to spice it up a little bit, but it’s nothing that dramatic or different for a film like this and doesn’t have any emotional weight or patient behind it so none of the fights leave any impression after watching. The movie does look nice for the most part with some cool looking locations that feature some nice color and art direction, with a production design done by Travis Hancock and Jan Roelfs, set decoration by Elli Griff and costumes done by Penny Rose that also make the film feel culturally appropriate, but after a nice colorful looking first act, the remainder of the movie mostly just consist of musty greys and harsh oranges, which is nowhere near as appealing and offers no unique visuals for something that could be very visually pleasing. While the CG is only used on the fantasy monsters and does look fake, its expressive and features enough sparks of color that at least it isn’t ugly to look at. Considering that the film did have quite a substantial budget, it does feel like that money was used but it’s just a shame that the end results weren’t really worth that amount.

For a story that is so important and so prevalent in the Japanese culture, it’s unfortunate that the first western version of said story wasn’t only told in a dumbed-down manner, but was also bland, boring, poorly told and not interesting enough so that no one would even believe it was a true event. 47 Ronin feels like a movie that would work pretty effectively under the direction of a traditional samurai portrayal, with slower pacing, dramatic camerawork, serious but distinct characters, and a style and tone that felt grounded and epic, but also theatrical and cinematic. However, with the western influence, newcomers behind the wheel of directing and Universal basically taking risks and just hoping that it would work, it made it pretty hard for it to turn out that great. It looks nice enough and some of the fights are fun, but the shallow story, poor acting, absolutely forgettable characters and lack of any depth or intrigue, leaves this one with very little honor to cling onto.