Some might say it's unfair to kick a film when it is so obviously down. I mean, it's hard to call a film with a reported $225m budget an underdog, but this notoriously troubled production is almost certainly doomed to commercial failure, and a prompt one-way trip to obscurity. Still, the trailer is hilarious and the film is wonderfully misguided, so it may be that 47 Ronin will live on with bad movie aficionados on home video.
So, where to start? The only logical entry point into this film is in the befuddling casting of Keanu Reeves as the lead in a retelling of a classic Japanese fable. Reeves is an actor who's spent the majority of his career getting flack for his wooden acting and surfer dude patois, but I've tended to defend the guy. See My Own Private Idaho for proof that some chops lurk somewhere beneath that beautiful visage.
The trailer opens with Reeves as a slave (referred to, here, as a "half-breed," which yikes), being rescued by a samurai so that he may be taken along in a mission for revenge. It's all a little too Django Unchained, but better that than to see this movie's take on 12 Years a Slave. What follows is a bewildering flipbook of queasy special effects as the titular 47 ronin assemble to fight a series of ribbon dancers. Reeves, tellingly, has very few lines beyond standard action movie utterances.
IMDb tells me Keanu Reeves claims that the film was first shot in Japanese, to appease the largely Japanese cast, before then being shot in English. I don't know much about the business end of filmmaking, to be sure, but that strikes me as wildly unnecessary. Oh well. A movie like this is designed to play better overseas than in the U.S. - though it's currently tanking in Japan, so oops.
47 Ronin - a movie I will never see (sober, anyway), but by which I am endlessly fascinated. Dance on, ribbons. Dance on.
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