47 Ronin (2013)

Today’s review has me a little…conflicted, to be honest. One the one hand, it’s a portrayal of one of my favorite historical stories of Japanese history. On the other, it’s an executive nightmare of a bomb starring Keanu “Whoa” Reeves. Either way, my popcorn bucket isn’t full enough.

The tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin is one of the most famous stories in all of Japan, made an integral part of their culture by its depiction of honor and loyalty. The short version is as follows: a lord named Asano Naganori was wrongfully ordered to commit seppuku (ritualistic suicide) as penance for attacking rude and arrogant shogunate official Kira Yoshinaka. Out of Naganori’s three-hundred men, forty-seven refused to let their lord go unavenged. Now made into ronin (master-less samurai), the forty-seven planned for two years to go into hiding and one day kill Yoshinaka. Two years passed, and the forty-seven ronin attacked and killed Yoshinaka. Their master avenged, they were ordered to commit seppuku in honor of their loyalty rather than be hanged as criminals. Every year, on December 14, hundreds of the Japanese populace gather at the gravesite of the ronin to pay their respects.

This film is not the first time that the story of the forty-seven ronin has been put to film, but it is the first American adaptation. Surely, the American portrayal of the film will be handled with the utmost respect and care?

...We’re in it for the long haul, people.

Alright, let’s get started with 47 Ronin. I’ll be doing this review much less spoiler-ish and more focused on the quality of everything. 

Story

The film does follow the story of the forty-seven ronin, but very poorly. I can understand that changes will need to be changed for an adaptation, but holy crap does this film not do any justice. Originally, Carl Rinsch (the director) intended to make this film am art-house samurai movie. That…would’ve been awesome. However, due to executive meddling, script re-writes, and Keanu Reeves’ concern of his character being more integral to the story, we get something…barely considered art.

We follow the story of Kai (Keanu Reeves), a halfbreed between an English sailor and a poor maiden girl raised by mystical demons residing in the forest known as the Tengu.

…I’ve already lost you, haven’t I?

Well one day, Kai ran away from the tengu and is found by Lord Asano. Asano takes him in as a servant, and Kai proceeds to follow every generic white guy premise and falls in love with Asano’s daughter, Mika. Years later, during a friendly tournament between Asano’s clan and rival Lord Kira’s clan, Kira had sent a witch to sabotage Asano’s champion. With little time, Kai takes the samurai’s armor and fights. He loses, and Asano’s house is disgrace. Made worse when Kira’s witch places a spell on Asano that makes him attack Kira in the night.

After Asano is forced to commit seppuku, everything is given to Kira, including his daughter in order to merge their clans and erupt no fighting. Kai is sold into slavery, and Asano’s right hand Oishi is thrown into captivity. A year passes when Oishi is freed. Thirsting for revenge for his lord, Oishi works to gather as many of Lord Asano’s warriors (including Kai) to fight and kill Kira.

Oy vey…where to begin? I suppose I’ll start with the most obvious: why even have Kai in this film? Overall in the story, he doesn’t really serve much of a purpose beyond the “outcast who ends up saving everyone” cliché. And even then, all he does is handle the mystical elements of the film. In fact, the entirety of the mystical elements are useless. If anything, they just make you roll your eyes as Japan is described as a “land of mystery and magic”.

I can get behind that this wasn’t meant to be a 100% accurate portrayal of the story. If anything, you get an overly dramatic feel similar to 300; overly stylized with some wackiness, but its all about framing. While 300 was fueled by the testosterone shot that is Zack Snyder, 47 Ronin lacks that “drive” to make it as over-the-top as possible. It seems to want to maintain that balance of seriousness (the original art-house direction, I can imagine) with the silliness of the Tengu, Kai, and the witch. If anything, the story shines best when it really is just about the samurai and their struggle rather than Kai’s romance or his battle with CGI monsters (seriously; 90% of Kai’s fights are with CGI).

I mean Keanu’s character of Kai could still be part of the story, hell even keep his romance with Mika as filler for the sidelines. Had the mystical element been removed completely, I would’ve found the story far more enjoyable.

Characters

A quick note: “wasted potential" seems to be a running gag with this movie, unfortunately. Also, as I’m typing this, I just realized that NO characters have a last name. Why?

Kai – Keanu Reeves: Kai, as stated before, is a half-breed man who grew up raised by the tengu and trained in their mystical arts of death and battle. Flat as a board, I must say. There really isn’t much to his character other than his love for Mika making up for the lessons of “despair and death” that the tengu taught him. Keanu’s acting does make up for what little he has to work with (for god’s sake, he barely had 10 lines before he’s sold into slavery). He even gets a chuckle out of me when he tries out humor. Beyond that, he’s just uninteresting. I’m supposing the reason he’s so bland is he’s doing the whole “servant bount to embrace death and reject love” thing going on, but it doesn’t really hold up overall. During the fight scenes, get gets THREE fights with normal people. The first with a giant armored samurai, the second with Oishi, and the third is with a random group of guards. All other fights with him are either against computer generated monsters or him using his “super tengu speed” to cut down man after man. He has little to no presence, and I just wish the film had cut the character out completely, rather than keep him for Keanu Reeves star power (what little there was post-Matrix but pre-John Wick).

Oishi – Hiroyuki Sanada: Aasano’s right hand man who takes over after his death. A determined and loyal man, Oishi will stop at nothing until justice is served in honor of his lord. Once again, a flat character, but Sanada’s acting more than makes up what he has to work with. The one thing I will say is that roughly 80% of the actors here don’t feel out of place, and give it their all. His best bits come during the slow, dramatic moments. Hell, he’s more of a protagonist than Kai throughout this whole thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure he has way more screen time. Thank god he never has to deal with CGI demons.

Mika –  Ko Shibasaki: Lord Asano’s daughter; the stock princess of the film. Useless, always crying, and needing to be rescued by Keanu Reeves among those honorable warriors seeking justice, she’s just there for the romance subplot. Also, the movie seems really dedicated to getting her killed one way or another. When her father died, she was given poison by her servants to “ease her pain”. Then later on in the film, she’s given a knife to kill herself with by The Witch. I know she’s a worthless addition to the movie, but I don’t think straight up killing her is enough-I mean necessary.

Lord Kira – Tadanobu Asano: The antagonist of the film. Smug. That’s about all there is to him. Smug. Seriously, the actor wears the same crap-eating grin throughout the entire movie. I think it’s a common theme for “asshole aristocrats” to have a permanent veil of smugness. Just as look at Roman Reigns. I think I’m gonna call it “Cersei’s Glare”. 

The sad thing is, this guy had POTENTIAL. For all intents and purposes, had the actor just went balls out crazy with the roll, the film would’ve been SO much better had the villain been engaging. You don’t really hate the character or want to see him defeated by the forty-seven ronin; you just want someone to smack him for how petty he is. Hell, we KNOW he’s going to lose at the end of the movie because he lost during a training session against some of HIS OWN MOOKS and savagely beat them when he played dirty.

Witch – Rinko Kikuchi: A powerful witch that serves alongside Lord Kira in his quest to rule the country. She’s the closest thing to a threat in this entire movie. While Kira is a pansy ass, she shows some initiative and is actually useful as a villain. She poisons, seduces, spies, and is pretty much the crutch holding Kira’s entire plan together. Now this actress knew what kind of movie she was in, and just went nuts with it. Or rather, what one THINKS nuts means. She’s hammy enough to make a scene worth riffing, but not over-the-top enough to reach full riff-ception. Luckily, where he acting isn’t very riffable, by lawd her CGI transformations are.

Now here’s a fun game: count how many characters I named off that MIGHT be on the poster of the movie?

Answer: 2 (3 if you want to get technical). I only named off two. The other two, the “Lovecraftian Samurai” and “Kapitan” have scenes, but SO little presence. The Lovecraftian Samurai only shows up for TWO scenes in the entire movie. In the first, its shown how powerful he is through his size and strength alone, making him an incredibly difficult opponent. The next scene he’s in…he gets blown up by a bomb. Both good and bad; good in that its nice to see some actual practical thinking (i.e. JUST SHOOT REALLY HARD), and bad in that we establish this thing’s a badass by taking down our protagonist Kai and is just taken out on the sideline? What a letdown.

As for Kapitan? Well, we’ll never know. Apparently, thanks to all of the executive meddling, whatever kind of role Kapitan had in the film was thrown down the gutter along with most likely whatever else was good for the film. We get ONE scene of him talking to Oishi….and that’s it. Such a waste of character design, too.

All the other characters in the movie? Well acted, I must say. Just none I would personally want to deal with. Everyone else follows the same pattern as flat, but by god do they do their acting well. The only other character I found tolerable is the fat Basho, and he gets killed off after taking at least five arrows to the back and saving Oishi. By god, did they give the best character one hell of a send-off.

Production

Oh…my…god. I LOVE the production in this movie. So much detail went into every little thing on the screens (that wasn’t bad CGI). The castles, landscape, the costume designs, the film is honestly incredibly beautiful. Heavily stylized, and a unique flavor to every detail. They really went all out to portray ancient Japan as it was in the 1800s. And I truly did mean it when I said I loved the costumes. I could get passed the disgustingly simple “red is for good” and “purple is for evil” look of the factions, but otherwise everything is just stunning to watch.

I especially loved the seppuku scenes. I can tell the film was taking the ritual serious, with realistic as possible imagery throughout. Perfectly paced, great camera shots, and just well performed by the actors who participated in them. If you were told this was meant to be an art-house film, and you saw ONLY the seppuku scenes, you might have believed it.

Hell, based on the production design alone, you would have thought it was an art-house film. Every little scene has such detail in the background and buildings that you can still see the shades of where executive meddling didn’t get in the way. Had our characters and story had the same amount of passion, I wouldn’t have this movie near the very bottom of my film collection.The aforementioned Lovecraftian Samurai is another example of the wasted production design alongside Kapitan. Such unique looking concepts, but thrown away in the final presentation. The score of the film is just as fantastic, still reminiscent of traditional Japanese music and very engaging depending on the scene.

The special effects however, are complete garbage.Honestly, its some of the worst I've ever seen. With CGI, it needs to be good enough to make you believe the object is actually there. If not good, then stylized enough to leave a lasting impact on the viewer. Here, the CGI is just fake and unpleasant to look at. The worst by far is the super speed Kai and the Tengu use, which seems to be going more for style (what little there is) over actually looking good. A big fail all-around. 

Conclusion: the film was just a mess. In my research, I found that most of what could’ve helped this film succeed was tossed out the window by executive meddling and an audience pre-screening in 2011 (two years before the film premiered). Heck, the movie was ANNOUNCED in 2008 with filming not even starting until 2011. This thing spent far too long in Production Hell and the pains from it show. This was Carl Rinsch’s directorial debut, and I wouldn’t hate on the film so much had it not be based on of my favorite historical events and stories. If nothing else, while watching the film, I had a sudden realization: this is a Japanese Man with the Iron Fists.

I mean THINK about it. The similarities are there. Strangely casted main characters, good production design (or the intent, rather), great fight scenes, and just the over-the-top (or potential thereof) nature of the films. Had 47 Ronin just went as balls to the wall insane as Iron Fists; I would’ve liked it a bit more. Whereas Iron Fists had the charm and stupidity of a “fun” movie, 47 Ronin was still trying too hard to keep what little art-house elements Carl Rinsch was trying to keep after it simmered too long in Production Hell. The worst part about all of this: there was good intent behind this entire movie. The movie was filmed in both English AND Japanese, and released the same month as the traditional time of honoring the original forty-seven ronin. The characters, the design, the scale, everything was built up so high. Too bad it never could pay up to the potential. It doesn't help that the film bombed horribly and as even panned by Japanese audiences. I would also complain about the historical inaccuracy of certain aspects, but considering this version of the Forty-Seven Ronin already contains six eyed bull demons, Flash-powered tengu, and a witch with REALLY unconvincing CGI magic, I think there’s enough to complain about.

Short version: potential washed down the drain with too many ideas tossed out or kept in for being wasted anyway. Which is a shame, because the tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin deserved such a better portrayal from the big budget promises that Hollywood could provide. I would only recommend this movie if you’re looking to see some nice scenery of Japan in the 1800s. Beyond that, there’s really not much else to the film. Thankfully, Japan has some of its own adaptations of the story throughout. I would highly recommend 47 Ronin (1994; directed by Kon Ichikawa), and The Loyal 47 Ronin (1958, directed by Kunio Watanabe). Otherwise, avoid this film unless you want a good laugh at Kira getting his ass beat.

D