There are some great action scenes in this movie, with great backstory to them. But it’s also a very cold & lonely, depressing movie for the most part, and the ending reflects this most of all. So you may love this movie the first one or two times you watch it, as I did, but once I got used to it, I had to balance its pros & cons to arrive at the rating of Decent – one level better than a mere OK.
There’s way too much glorification of suicide in this movie. In reality, I believe there’s nothing honourable about suicide – it’s among the greatest of sins. And there’s nothing glorious about pride & honour – that’s a minor sin, best replaced with humility. So the fact that everyone voluntarily suicides to honour their “lord” in this movie, makes it quite off-putting. It’s quite sacrilegious in this way. But it still has some great action scenes with some great script detail and great screenplay by some great cast members, so I guess I have a love-hate relationship with this movie.
Keanu Reeves stars in 47 Ronin as a half-breed man trained by demons and capable of all their tricks. I’m not sure if half-breed means he’s half Japanese, half white; or if it means he’s half human, half demon. Anyway, he was wronged and banished from his hometown, then teamed up with other banished ronins (former samurai, whose master was killed) to take back his hometown and rescue the princess from a wedding she wasn’t comfortable with. That’s the story in a nutshell. The acting and action is good but the story is frequently gloomy and depressing so it’s a movie of pros and cons for fans of the smooth action hero genre like myself.
Keanu is his usual self. He does a decent job here and is supported by good choreography and special effects.
His main sidekick in this movie – a banished Samarai who frees him from slavery and joins him in rescuing the princess, is played well by Hiroyuki Sanada.
The leader of all Japan, who doesn’t get much screentime but still adds plenty of value to this movie, is played by the legendary Japanese-American actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (from Licence To Kill 1989 with Timothy Dalton; Showdown in Little Tokyo 1991 with Brandon Lee & Dolph Lundgren; Mortal Kombat 1995 with Christopher Lambert; Elektra 2005 with Jennifer Garner; Tekken 2009 & 2014, and many more movies aside from these classics).