Huzzah! The Metro Manila Film Festival has ended and international films are available once more!

Here’s my round up of Carl Risch’s 47 Ronin (Note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk):

THE STORY:

The film opens with a young Kai (Daniel Barber) being saved by daimyo Asano (Min Tanaka), lord of the Aggo province, from a forest that was speculated to be haunted by demons. Kai (grown up Keanu Reeves) -endearingly nicknamed “half-breed” because he was the abandoned son of a British sailor and a peasant Japanese woman- has already accepted his place as an outcast in Lord Asano’s household. He knows that the lord’s samurai will never accept him, especially the samurai leader Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), who believes him to be cursed because he grew up in the demon forest.

Things get complicated when both daimyo Kira (Tadanobu Asano) of Aggo’s rival province and Japan’s ruling shogun visits Lord Asano’s household for a tourney. Kira’s enlists his witchy concubine Mizuki (Rinko Kukichi) to help him defeat Lord Asano once and for all so he can claim Aggo for himself. Through sorcery, Lord Asano is shamed and, much to the grief of his daughter Mika (Ko Shibasaki), is sentenced by the shogun to death by seppuku. All of his samurais are banished and stripped down to ronin status, forbidden to seek revenge for their lord’s death as Mika is assigned to be married to Lord Kira.

Kai, Oishi and the rest of the disgraced ronins reunite and work together to rescue Mika and avenge Lord Asano’s death.

THE GOOD:

1. The actor who played Oishi’s son and the actor who played the young Kai. They were very pretty and I’m shallow like that.

2. The action sequences were incredibly clean and precise. Despite the dark backdrop you can clearly distinguish which character was which, and that actually did help a lot. There was even this one sequence where they had the good guy wear red so you’d see which one to root for.

3. The witch was effectively creepy. Her movements were sinewy and languid befitting a person who knew she was indestructible. I definitely appreciated the fact that despite the less than lady-like way of sitting and all of the leg baring, she still didn’t come off as slutty or sexy.

4. The Sepukku scenes were well played. I like that they took their time with these scenes and regarded them with respect. They highlighted the fact that it was a dignified way of dealing with death because they, quite literally, had their lives in their own hands. Although I did keep on thinking why it was necessary for them to wear white when it’d just stain, you know?

5. Special shout outs to Min Tanaka and Horoyuki Tanada for memorable performances. They truly emitted the dignified aura of the samurai.

THE BAD:

1. The convoluted fashion. What the hell is up with those shoulder pads? I can see that they were trying to show the mergence of the East and the West through the use of clothes but it is very much jarring to see a kimono with a cowl neck.

2. The film felt rushed, despite the almost two hour screen time. The film just zoomed through some of the sequences that most of the heart wrenching scenes lost their climactic value. It’s a shame because the fight scenes were good enough to have been epic but they sort of feel negligible because they weren’t set up properly.

3. The magic-y part of the movie. I get it that the part of the witch was necessary but I think the story could’ve lived without Kai’s powers. I mean, he didn’t exactly use them in battle, now, did he?

4. The bad guy was a cookie cutter cut out and didn’t have anything going for him, except for those shoulder pads. Actually, now that I think about it, if you’ll tell the story from his point of view, he was just a lord who wanted the fighting to stop and to combine the two provinces under one united rule. But then these vagabonds ambushed his wedding, stole his bride and then killed him.

THE UGLY:

1. The waste of backdrop. The backdrop was so beautiful but wasn’t used at all. For shame.

2. The forced love story. I’m assuming they took liberties with the romantic plot arc in the movie, considering that the film was ‘inspired’ by the 47 ronin tale but isn’t it a tad ridiculous to pivot the whole story onto the romance? It sort of cheapened the whole thing . It could’ve been more epic had they just kept the story all about revenge.

3. I hated how simpering the damsel in distress was. The witch was right; everybody died because of her lust and she didn’t even have the decency to kill herself. Somewhere in the film she was handed a bottle of poison to “make the pain stop” but she was too chicken shit to actually go through with the suicide. Hurr.

All in all this movie had the makings of a truly memorable epic. I mean, the story was already there and it just needed to be told. Unfortunately it was mishandled and was placed in incapable hands that were lazy and reliant of the star power that the cast was capable of generating.

This is the perfect example of how a film can be ruined by unnecessary complexities. Had the film makers edited and showed a little bit of self restraint, the movie could’ve been salvageable.

Verdict: 4.8/10. Wait for it on cable TV.

All photos are courtesy of the film’s IMDB page.