There’s bad, and then there’s 47 Ronin. (Very mild thematic / setting spoilers included.)
I should let you in on a not-so-secret fact about movies I enjoy. Admittedly, I am a fairly critical viewer and some of my friends bemoan my ability to tear apart a film when I’ve put on my “reviewer hat.” Something I rarely share with others, however, is the fact that I actively seek out really bad movies in hopes that they loop back around on my enjoyment wheel from “bad and boring” to “bad and entertaining-as-all-hell.” A great example of this for me is the 2000 release of Dungeons and Dragons – an abysmally put together piece of motion-video that sprints wildly from being inexcusably terrible to “This is so bad that you will laugh until your sides hurt and simultaneously learn several lessons in what NOT to do when making a movie.” So, for this reason and no other, I saw Rotten Tomatoes’ 11% rating as a sign that 47 Ronin might lead me down the path to horrifying excellence.
This year’s Christmas Day action/period-drama flop finds Keanu Reeves (and every other character) playing a one-dimensional member of history’s 47 Ronin. I could go on at length where this movie missed the mark, but the film doesn’t even deserve that courtesy… so without further ado, here is the most condense list I can muster as to why this film is so terrible.
10. The first ten minutes of the film set it up for failure. It clumsily introduces our main characters with some serious hand-waving around Kai in particular, and it doesn’t give us any substance to feel connected to anyone. There’s a stomach-churning sequence in which our protagonist, Kai, runs through the woods at 12 frames per second and leads into the setup for an unrequited love sub-plot. These events are so poorly assembled that a narrator has to tell you what’s going on over every single scene in the sequence because you would otherwise have no clue what the poorly edited mess actually means. Yeah, it’s not like you wanted to take 20 minutes to develop meaningful characters or anything. You can spend that 20 minutes showing us some unnecessary scene later on. No worries!
9. Kai, and all the other characters, are the most boring, blank-slate characters you have ever seen. Let me assure you that I have spent many years watching and reviewing Japanese movies in which timed silence is a key character trait, so I am in no way confusing cultural norms for bad writing and poorly directed actors. There is literally nothing to discover underneath the surface of these characters and it’s painful to watch them try to make us feel for them throughout their struggles.
8. The pacing is nonexistent at best. Stuff happens, then some more stuff happens in another place. Each time you feel like something exciting is about to happen, it fizzles out rather uneventfully. It’s rare that I wish for gratuitous actions scenes so I can be distracted from the slog of a really slow movie, but what I wouldn’t have given for some excessive samurai sword swingin’ action!
7. This film has crazy-land, not-earth Seasons. The settings in the film are actually pretty cool and sometimes an imaginative twist on Tokugawa era Japan, but because the pacing and editing are piss-poor, seasons and travel don’t make a whole lot of sense. Sometimes it’s spring, other times it’s suddenly fall. They attack a fortress in winter and then they are suddenly whisked away to the emperor’s castle in spring, where they end the film intending to be ceremonious under the falling sakura blossoms.
6. The villains in this movie are CHUMPS. Without getting spoilery, let me just assure you that each of them is horribly squandered. I can’t say much here without spoilers, so just trust me on this one. Oh, and that awesome dude with all the tattoos that was featured in all the movie posters and advertising? You’ll see him all of two minutes in the movie.
5. Hollywood needed to insert Keanu Reeves, but he couldn’t just be some guy. This telling of 47 Ronin has added a “half-breed” swordsman (Kai aka Keanu Reeves), and he is somehow is better at being a Samurai than any other Samurai… because Hollywood. Did I mention that it’s because he’s a demon-y thing? Oh, well, he’s a demon-y thing – PLOT REASONS.
4. Either be fully committed to your elements of historical accuracy or don’t take yourself so seriously! This film paid immaculate attention to detail when it came to many historical accuracies of Tokugawa-era Japan (dialogue around Bushido, period clothing, weapons), and then simultaneously found opportunities to turn its back to you and ask you to look the other way. Shhhhh, women were totally free to speak to their lords/husbands without being prompted. Shhhhhhh, our dialogue and behaviors are totally historically accurate. What do you mean the Dutch island wasn’t home to a bajillion ships full of tattooed badasses and a pirate Thunderdome? EVERYBODY wants a pirate Thunderdome!
3. This film could have been epic. The story of The 47 Ronin is an impressive tale steeped in history and with lots of opportunity for meaningful creative exploration, but this movie completely fails to tell the story with any sense of storytelling, passion, or character development so it’s a seriously painful watch. I have no problem with the film wanting to weave in Japanese mythology for the sake of making an alternate story, but with dialogue and writing akin to that of a 6th grade play, it’s hard to enjoy a tale that could have been so masterfully told with proper direction and narrative.
2. I think the words I heard were supposed to sound like dialogue. Either let your actors speak English without accents or ask them to speak Japanese. But please, it absolutely kills the acting and the experience of each scene when everyone is trying to force Japanese accents. Not only does it break your immersion in the film, but it sounds like nails on a chalkboard every time you have to hear a grating pronunciation of words like “Redding (wedding).” Many of the actors in this film actually command excellent English speaking ability and asking them to force the accent blend is just wrong.
1. No, really, this film could have been epic! Sorry for listing this twice, but I just can’t get over how much potential was wasted. The story of 47 Ronin is so unbelievably badass! If you’ll excuse me, I need to go watch some Kurosawa to cleanse my mind of this night.