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47 Ronin
I finally watched 47 Ronin (the recent Keanu Reeves version) on dvd, and it actually wasn't bad. I won't go so far as to say it was great, but it was entertaining, and much better than I expected from the lukewarm-to-bad reviews that the movie got.
When I first heard a few years ago that Keanu was planning to do a 47 Ronin remake, I was kind of dreading it, wondering how awful it was going to be and how they were going to pass him off as a samurai. Even if he is part Asian, he really doesn't look Japanese. So when I saw the first previews, I was less outraged when I saw that they had turned the story into a supernatural action/fantasy movie, which was what got me to watch it. Although if it had been a straight-up remake, I probably would have watched it out of morbid curiosity just to see how bad it would be.
So within the context of this AU feudal Japan in which demons and witches exist, it doesn't seem that out of place to have Lord Asano rescue and take in a mixed-race child running from the demons in the forest, whereas that could never believably have happened in a straightforward historical drama.
Which isn't to say that Kai (Keanu's character) is made welcome by the rest of Asano's people: most of the samurai contemptuously refer to him as "the half-breed" and make it clear that they don't consider him an equal. However, he and Asano's daughter Mika become close friends, and the young Mika and Kai are very cute and sweet together.
Unfortunately, Keanu and the adult Mika (Ko Shibasaki) don't have as good chemistry, although they are supposed to be deeply in love--a tragic, forbidden love since Asano's daughter would never be allowed to marry a half-breed. Both actors do their best, but they don't have the same spark that the young Mika and Kai do, although their brief, bittersweet reunion towards the end of the movie had a nice sense of tenderness. I liked Shibasaki a lot in her detective roles in the Galileo and Gaikoukan Kuroda Kosaku dramas, but unfortunately, she doesn't have much to do here other than play the damsel in distress. To be fair, she does try to kill Kira with a dagger at one point, but on the other hand, he easily disarms her before she can so much as scratch him. I'm not sure that the writers of movies like these know that samurai women didn't just sit around looking pretty, but were trained in self-defense, albeit some to a greater degree than others (see my book review on Samurai Women 1184-1877).
One of the flaws of the movie were that while the costumes were gorgeous and the special effects looked good, the plot seemed a little thin at times. The villainous Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano) is aided by a beautiful, unnamed witch (Rinko Kikuchi), but the movie never really explains why she's working for Kira--whether it's a purely mercenary arrangement, or if she's in love with him. I got the impression, though it wasn't clearly stated, that the witch was jealous of Mika, who was forcibly betrothed to Kira after her father's death. Another plot point that didn't entirely make sense was that a troupe of actors help the ronin to sneak into the castle grounds to kill Kira. Presumably the actors would be punished and most likely executed if Kira uncovered the deception, so I found myself wondering why they would risk their lives for the ronin. A quick line about how they owe a great debt to Lord Asano (or how Kira has wronged them in the past) would have made it more believable to me, but perhaps I'm overthinking things and paying more attention to detail than the average moviegoer would expect from an fantasy/action film.
And of course Keanu has his limitations as an actor. Mostly Kai is either stoic (silently bearing the verbal abuse of Asano's men without complaint) or angry (at Asano's death, of course), which doesn't overly stretch his limits as an actor for the most part. Still, I couldn't help feeling that a better actor could have given Kai's character more depth. Conceptually, Kai's character is interesting--he's an outsider and a half-breed, but in some ways, he's more samurai than the samurai. Lord Asano saved his life, and in return, he's unswervingly loyal, never complaining about the way Asano's men treat him or showing any resentment towards them in private, even when a frustrated Mika wants to know why he doesn't want more from life than this. Out of loyalty, he won't leave Asano's service, and he can't change the way Asano's men feel about him, so he simply accepts the situation and endures it, bringing to mind the Japanese saying "Shikata ga nai," which essentially means, "It can't be helped." Eventually that loyalty does win over the ronin and they accept him into their ranks when they take their revenge on Kira, but it felt to me like Kai's character was never developed to its full potential.
OTOH, Keanu seemed to have worked hard on the role and carried out the physical side of it impressively. The fight scenes looked good (to my admittedly untrained eye), and he carried out all the formal bowing and kneeling with a grace and precision that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a more realistic historical drama. I really loved the scene near the beginning of the movie when Kai is accompanying Asano's men on a demon hunt. One of the samurai, Yasuno, is knocked down and disarmed by the beast, and Kai snatches up the blade and slays the demon. Then he kneels down, bows his head, and respectfully offers the sword back up to Yasuno in a fluid and graceful move. Yasuno is far from grateful, and instead, angry and humiliated to be saved by "the half-breed," but that eventually makes his acceptance of Kai all the more moving later in the film.
And I do feel a little bad picking on Keanu, who's become sort on an inside joke in my Harudaki fics. He's always seemed like a nice guy when I saw him on talk shows, and it turns out that not only is he a nice guy, he's an incredibly generous one who gave millions of dollars of his Matrix movie profits to the special effects and costume design teams because they "were the true heroes of the movie," and was quite generous towards other crew members as well. So if everything in this article is true, he is a really awesome guy, and I'm sorry for making fun of you, Keanu!
Although I've pointed out the movie's flaws, there were many things that I did like. The Japanese cast were all impressive, including such respected names as Hiroyuki Sanada (Asano's chief retainer Oishi), along with the previously mentioned Tadanobu Asano and Rinko Kikuchi. The witch was a rather stereotypical evil temptress type role, but Kikuchi played it well, and it was an interesting contrast to her more innocent and heroic role in Pacific Rim. As for Asano (the actor, not the character, that is), he looked gorgeous (though ominous) dressed all in black, but at the same time, gave off such an aura of menace and malice--with especially creepy overtones towards Mika--that he was repugnant in spite of his outward good looks. (Which is a compliment, since it takes a lot to repulse me when it comes to beautiful bad boys, but Kira really made my skin crawl.)
The older men making up most of the 47 ronin were stern and stoic, which fits their characters, but it also made the exceptions stand out all the more. Former boy band singer (from the band KAT-TUN) Jin Akanishi was really good as Oishi's son, Chikara. He had a lot of charisma, and showed more emotion and vulnerability than the older men, which made a nice contrast and suits his character as a younger, less experienced samurai. I was really impressed by him, and pleasantly surprised to see that he's more than just a pretty face. (Although he is indeed very nice to look at!)
Takato Yonemoto also stood out in a small role among the 47 ronin, playing Basho, one of the few--perhaps only--ronin who was friendly to Kai prior to the revenge conspiracy. It was kind of a stereotypical "fat guy as the comic relief" type role, but Yonemoto was really likeable as Basho, and managed to impart some humor even during his deathbed scene, making it both moving and funny without being tacky.
Sanada didn't really get to show a lot of emotional range in Oishi's character, but still, I did enjoy watching him slowly change his attitude towards Kai over the course of the movie. And there was a very nice moment in that early hunting scene where Kai saves Yasuno and kills the demon. By the time that Asano and the other samurai catch up with them, Yasuno is holding his sword, so they naturally assume that he killed the creature, and praise him for his valor. Though he looks uneasy, he silently accepts their praise, and Kai doesn't contradict him. But Oishi looks over at Kai and sees that he's covered in the demon's blood while Yasuno is not, and in that one glance, without having to utter a single word, Sanada conveys that Oishi knows the truth, although he also remains silent. It was a very nice moment, and to me, just as impressive in its own way as the action scenes.
I did enjoy some of the supernatural elements of the plot, including the allusion to the traditional kitsune and tengu legends: Kai first spots the witch in the form of a fox during the demon hunt, and we later learn that Kai was held captive as a child by the tengu prior to being rescued by Asano. He later returns to the tengu, along with Oishi, and is able to obtain swords from them after being challenged and tested by their leader. Also, when they are disguised as performers, one of the ronin (I think it was Oishi) was dressed up in a tengu costume, which nicely hints at the earlier encounter with the real tengu.
Some of the changes that the writers made to the plot were interesting, too. In the original story, Lord Asano is a young, idealistic man who incurs Kira's wrath when he refuses to pay Kira a bribe. Eventually he loses his temper and attacks Kira after being goaded by Kira's insults, leading to his punishment of committing seppuku (ritual suicide). In this version, Asano is an older, wiser, and more cautious man who would not have made such an impulsive mistake, and Kira has to have his witch trick Asano into attacking him.
Another change was the addition of the character of Mika, who doesn't exist in the original. She seems to mostly take the place that Asano's wife played in the original, and I'm sure that the change was made to give Kai a love interest. While it's not as interesting a change as the ones involving Asano, it does add to Kira's villainy and give the plot a sense of urgency. In the original, the ronin waited for a year in order to get Kira to lower his guard, but in this version, the Shogun has ordered that Mika marry Kira at the end of her one-year mourning period for her father, which means that the ronin must defeat Kira by the end of the year in order to save her.
I was wondering if a Hollywood film would attempt to give the story a happy ending and find some way for Kai and Mika to live happily ever after. So I was a little surprised--though not disappointed--that they kept the tragic ending. The ronin redeem their lord's honor and even the Shogun is touched by their loyalty, but they still must pay the price for their crime and commit seppuku. Kai is granted the honor of a samurai's death along with them, having shown that he is as brave and loyal as any full-blooded samurai--but still, it is a death sentence. (Though he is content to have saved Mika and avenged his lord). However, the movie does add a little bit of hope by having the Shogun spare Chikara's life so that he can help Mika rebuild Ako (the Asano family's domain); in the original, Chikara died along with the other ronin. As for Kai and Mika, they have only the vague hope of being reunited someday in another life, and Kai pledges to search for her no matter how many lifetimes it takes. I was half expecting an epilogue scene in which the two meet in the afterlife, or perhaps get reincarnated into a more peaceful future, but the movie ends on that bittersweet note. It's a fitting ending to the movie, and the impact probably would have been lessened with a tacked-on happy ending...but still, I find myself wanting to write fix-it fic where Kai and Mika get to be reincarnated and have a happier ending the second time around. Now that I think about it, that reminds me of the ill-fated lovers in the Fuyu no Semi (Winter Cicadas) story in the Haru wo Daiteita (Embracing Love) manga.
If any of you are interested in reading a more traditional version of the 47 Ronin, Usagi Yojimbo's Stan Sakai illustrated a graphic novel version written by Mike Richardson. I love Sakai's Usagi books, and he shows the same attention to detail in the historical setting that he does in Usagi. Also, the interviews with him and Richardson at the end of the book tell a bit about the history of the real incident involving Asano and Kira and the 47 ronin.
When I first heard a few years ago that Keanu was planning to do a 47 Ronin remake, I was kind of dreading it, wondering how awful it was going to be and how they were going to pass him off as a samurai. Even if he is part Asian, he really doesn't look Japanese. So when I saw the first previews, I was less outraged when I saw that they had turned the story into a supernatural action/fantasy movie, which was what got me to watch it. Although if it had been a straight-up remake, I probably would have watched it out of morbid curiosity just to see how bad it would be.
So within the context of this AU feudal Japan in which demons and witches exist, it doesn't seem that out of place to have Lord Asano rescue and take in a mixed-race child running from the demons in the forest, whereas that could never believably have happened in a straightforward historical drama.
Which isn't to say that Kai (Keanu's character) is made welcome by the rest of Asano's people: most of the samurai contemptuously refer to him as "the half-breed" and make it clear that they don't consider him an equal. However, he and Asano's daughter Mika become close friends, and the young Mika and Kai are very cute and sweet together.
Unfortunately, Keanu and the adult Mika (Ko Shibasaki) don't have as good chemistry, although they are supposed to be deeply in love--a tragic, forbidden love since Asano's daughter would never be allowed to marry a half-breed. Both actors do their best, but they don't have the same spark that the young Mika and Kai do, although their brief, bittersweet reunion towards the end of the movie had a nice sense of tenderness. I liked Shibasaki a lot in her detective roles in the Galileo and Gaikoukan Kuroda Kosaku dramas, but unfortunately, she doesn't have much to do here other than play the damsel in distress. To be fair, she does try to kill Kira with a dagger at one point, but on the other hand, he easily disarms her before she can so much as scratch him. I'm not sure that the writers of movies like these know that samurai women didn't just sit around looking pretty, but were trained in self-defense, albeit some to a greater degree than others (see my book review on Samurai Women 1184-1877).
One of the flaws of the movie were that while the costumes were gorgeous and the special effects looked good, the plot seemed a little thin at times. The villainous Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano) is aided by a beautiful, unnamed witch (Rinko Kikuchi), but the movie never really explains why she's working for Kira--whether it's a purely mercenary arrangement, or if she's in love with him. I got the impression, though it wasn't clearly stated, that the witch was jealous of Mika, who was forcibly betrothed to Kira after her father's death. Another plot point that didn't entirely make sense was that a troupe of actors help the ronin to sneak into the castle grounds to kill Kira. Presumably the actors would be punished and most likely executed if Kira uncovered the deception, so I found myself wondering why they would risk their lives for the ronin. A quick line about how they owe a great debt to Lord Asano (or how Kira has wronged them in the past) would have made it more believable to me, but perhaps I'm overthinking things and paying more attention to detail than the average moviegoer would expect from an fantasy/action film.
And of course Keanu has his limitations as an actor. Mostly Kai is either stoic (silently bearing the verbal abuse of Asano's men without complaint) or angry (at Asano's death, of course), which doesn't overly stretch his limits as an actor for the most part. Still, I couldn't help feeling that a better actor could have given Kai's character more depth. Conceptually, Kai's character is interesting--he's an outsider and a half-breed, but in some ways, he's more samurai than the samurai. Lord Asano saved his life, and in return, he's unswervingly loyal, never complaining about the way Asano's men treat him or showing any resentment towards them in private, even when a frustrated Mika wants to know why he doesn't want more from life than this. Out of loyalty, he won't leave Asano's service, and he can't change the way Asano's men feel about him, so he simply accepts the situation and endures it, bringing to mind the Japanese saying "Shikata ga nai," which essentially means, "It can't be helped." Eventually that loyalty does win over the ronin and they accept him into their ranks when they take their revenge on Kira, but it felt to me like Kai's character was never developed to its full potential.
OTOH, Keanu seemed to have worked hard on the role and carried out the physical side of it impressively. The fight scenes looked good (to my admittedly untrained eye), and he carried out all the formal bowing and kneeling with a grace and precision that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a more realistic historical drama. I really loved the scene near the beginning of the movie when Kai is accompanying Asano's men on a demon hunt. One of the samurai, Yasuno, is knocked down and disarmed by the beast, and Kai snatches up the blade and slays the demon. Then he kneels down, bows his head, and respectfully offers the sword back up to Yasuno in a fluid and graceful move. Yasuno is far from grateful, and instead, angry and humiliated to be saved by "the half-breed," but that eventually makes his acceptance of Kai all the more moving later in the film.
And I do feel a little bad picking on Keanu, who's become sort on an inside joke in my Harudaki fics. He's always seemed like a nice guy when I saw him on talk shows, and it turns out that not only is he a nice guy, he's an incredibly generous one who gave millions of dollars of his Matrix movie profits to the special effects and costume design teams because they "were the true heroes of the movie," and was quite generous towards other crew members as well. So if everything in this article is true, he is a really awesome guy, and I'm sorry for making fun of you, Keanu!
Although I've pointed out the movie's flaws, there were many things that I did like. The Japanese cast were all impressive, including such respected names as Hiroyuki Sanada (Asano's chief retainer Oishi), along with the previously mentioned Tadanobu Asano and Rinko Kikuchi. The witch was a rather stereotypical evil temptress type role, but Kikuchi played it well, and it was an interesting contrast to her more innocent and heroic role in Pacific Rim. As for Asano (the actor, not the character, that is), he looked gorgeous (though ominous) dressed all in black, but at the same time, gave off such an aura of menace and malice--with especially creepy overtones towards Mika--that he was repugnant in spite of his outward good looks. (Which is a compliment, since it takes a lot to repulse me when it comes to beautiful bad boys, but Kira really made my skin crawl.)
The older men making up most of the 47 ronin were stern and stoic, which fits their characters, but it also made the exceptions stand out all the more. Former boy band singer (from the band KAT-TUN) Jin Akanishi was really good as Oishi's son, Chikara. He had a lot of charisma, and showed more emotion and vulnerability than the older men, which made a nice contrast and suits his character as a younger, less experienced samurai. I was really impressed by him, and pleasantly surprised to see that he's more than just a pretty face. (Although he is indeed very nice to look at!)
Takato Yonemoto also stood out in a small role among the 47 ronin, playing Basho, one of the few--perhaps only--ronin who was friendly to Kai prior to the revenge conspiracy. It was kind of a stereotypical "fat guy as the comic relief" type role, but Yonemoto was really likeable as Basho, and managed to impart some humor even during his deathbed scene, making it both moving and funny without being tacky.
Sanada didn't really get to show a lot of emotional range in Oishi's character, but still, I did enjoy watching him slowly change his attitude towards Kai over the course of the movie. And there was a very nice moment in that early hunting scene where Kai saves Yasuno and kills the demon. By the time that Asano and the other samurai catch up with them, Yasuno is holding his sword, so they naturally assume that he killed the creature, and praise him for his valor. Though he looks uneasy, he silently accepts their praise, and Kai doesn't contradict him. But Oishi looks over at Kai and sees that he's covered in the demon's blood while Yasuno is not, and in that one glance, without having to utter a single word, Sanada conveys that Oishi knows the truth, although he also remains silent. It was a very nice moment, and to me, just as impressive in its own way as the action scenes.
I did enjoy some of the supernatural elements of the plot, including the allusion to the traditional kitsune and tengu legends: Kai first spots the witch in the form of a fox during the demon hunt, and we later learn that Kai was held captive as a child by the tengu prior to being rescued by Asano. He later returns to the tengu, along with Oishi, and is able to obtain swords from them after being challenged and tested by their leader. Also, when they are disguised as performers, one of the ronin (I think it was Oishi) was dressed up in a tengu costume, which nicely hints at the earlier encounter with the real tengu.
Some of the changes that the writers made to the plot were interesting, too. In the original story, Lord Asano is a young, idealistic man who incurs Kira's wrath when he refuses to pay Kira a bribe. Eventually he loses his temper and attacks Kira after being goaded by Kira's insults, leading to his punishment of committing seppuku (ritual suicide). In this version, Asano is an older, wiser, and more cautious man who would not have made such an impulsive mistake, and Kira has to have his witch trick Asano into attacking him.
Another change was the addition of the character of Mika, who doesn't exist in the original. She seems to mostly take the place that Asano's wife played in the original, and I'm sure that the change was made to give Kai a love interest. While it's not as interesting a change as the ones involving Asano, it does add to Kira's villainy and give the plot a sense of urgency. In the original, the ronin waited for a year in order to get Kira to lower his guard, but in this version, the Shogun has ordered that Mika marry Kira at the end of her one-year mourning period for her father, which means that the ronin must defeat Kira by the end of the year in order to save her.
I was wondering if a Hollywood film would attempt to give the story a happy ending and find some way for Kai and Mika to live happily ever after. So I was a little surprised--though not disappointed--that they kept the tragic ending. The ronin redeem their lord's honor and even the Shogun is touched by their loyalty, but they still must pay the price for their crime and commit seppuku. Kai is granted the honor of a samurai's death along with them, having shown that he is as brave and loyal as any full-blooded samurai--but still, it is a death sentence. (Though he is content to have saved Mika and avenged his lord). However, the movie does add a little bit of hope by having the Shogun spare Chikara's life so that he can help Mika rebuild Ako (the Asano family's domain); in the original, Chikara died along with the other ronin. As for Kai and Mika, they have only the vague hope of being reunited someday in another life, and Kai pledges to search for her no matter how many lifetimes it takes. I was half expecting an epilogue scene in which the two meet in the afterlife, or perhaps get reincarnated into a more peaceful future, but the movie ends on that bittersweet note. It's a fitting ending to the movie, and the impact probably would have been lessened with a tacked-on happy ending...but still, I find myself wanting to write fix-it fic where Kai and Mika get to be reincarnated and have a happier ending the second time around. Now that I think about it, that reminds me of the ill-fated lovers in the Fuyu no Semi (Winter Cicadas) story in the Haru wo Daiteita (Embracing Love) manga.
If any of you are interested in reading a more traditional version of the 47 Ronin, Usagi Yojimbo's Stan Sakai illustrated a graphic novel version written by Mike Richardson. I love Sakai's Usagi books, and he shows the same attention to detail in the historical setting that he does in Usagi. Also, the interviews with him and Richardson at the end of the book tell a bit about the history of the real incident involving Asano and Kira and the 47 ronin.