Review of 47 Ronin (1994) by Drago? C — 18 May 2014

47 Ronin could have been a considerably better movie. It could have achieved this had it stuck with either one cultural orientation instead of trying to produce a hollywood blockbuster bastard child of the original story. Because you can't have both. You can't have political melodrama and bushido trappings alongside a leading man western audiences can identify with (Reeves). You can't have taiga drama plots of honour, corruption and bushido and boy-loves-girl romantic pair shenanigans.

47 Ronin has a few things going for it. Good direction, nice colour conscious cinematography that reminds me of Hero, interesting and competently shot battles and some interesting CGI, the movie attempting to blend a bit of fantasy into a political drama to add some (oriental?) 'mystique' to it. The second thing the movie really has going for it is the spectacular cast, featuring a virtual who's who of Japanese actors and the aforementioned Keeanu reeves who pulls out his best Neo meets Constantine and falls easily into the shoes of underdog protagonist the public should root for. He is also part of the reason why the movie fails, his backstory, arc and relationship feeling completely tacked onto the story (as they were) and often taking narrative breaking precedence over it.

The story of the 47 ronin is a dry parable about honour and bushido. 47 ronin, the movie is.. .too many things at once. It tries to juggle dry taiga drama politics, fantasy elements, an out of place Gai-Jin Reeves and his love interest at once and fails, losing a lot of the interesting bits of both the original story and (probably) Kai's story along the way.