47 Ronin

Keanu is like the stoner version of Nicolas Cage, he’s just not as self aware as Cage is. And I’m talking about the post bankruptcy Cage when he was doing any movie that was thrown at him because he needed the cash, not the Adaptation or Raising Arizona Cage. What I mean by this is that Cage has become a caricature of himself and he uses that to his advantage; Keanu I don’t believe is smart enough to do this so his agent does it for him. Don’t get me wrong, I hear nothing but great things about Keanu in regards to how nice of a guy he is and how he tries extremely hard to be good at the roles he is in but let’s be honest; his agent knew exactly what he was doing when he used Keanu’s natural ability to look lost at every idea that extends beyond animal crackers when he got him the role of Neo in The Matrix. He was set after that!

And this is why we love Keanu; the majority of us are just as dumb as he is, we just wont admit it to ourselves. And then there are the Honey Boo Boo idiots who are obviously dumber but they love him as well because it gives them someone to look up to even if they don’t realize that Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey wasn’t a documentary.

Seeing as how I just admitted that I’m an idiot, it should come as no surprise that I had been looking forward to 47 Ronin for almost a year when I saw that Hollywood decided to release another version of this Japanese tale involving a surfer white dude as a Samurai master. Oh and I can’t forget the fact that he would also be fighting strange beasts and weird tattoo covered Irish (I believe) beings while trying to earn honor among his fellow Samurai.

I lost interest about an hour into this snooze fest but I believe the plot went something like this; Keanu is a half-breed that was raised in the forest. One day for whatever reason he runs away and is found by a local village leader in Asano and his son Oishi. Despite the Samurai's wishes to instantly kill him, Asano decides to take him in as his own. But as he raises Keanu, he becomes an outcast in the village and is only shown love by Asano’s daughter Mika.  I think it’s because she finally saw a man that was taller than 5’3” but that could just be me. Anyway, one day during a friendly test of skill between villages, Kira and his witch of the rival town unleash their evil plan to disgrace Asano and his followers that will ultimately lead to his ruling over their land, the marrying of Mika, and the exiling of the local Samurai.

I believe it was around the time that Keanu decided to lead the Samurai into the forest from which he came that I fell asleep for a few minutes. Only to awaken to him fighting his own weird reptile people so that he could get weapons for his crew as they were on their way to avenge the death of their leader. There are really only three moments in this movie that will hold your attention and they are when Keanu helps fight the beast at the beginning, when Keanu is sold into slavery and forced to fight giant mutants for entertainment, and of course every blank stare Keanu makes as he tries to understand Japanese culture. If you can't tell, I like saying the word Keanu. 

Now to his credit, I too have a hard time understanding some of their ways. They seem to be happy when they get to kill themselves and for some reason witches only want to turn into weird foxes. Is life so hard in Japan that the highlight of your life is slitting your stomach open? Sadly there is very little action for a movie that involves Samurai.The majority of this movie is a lot of walking and talking, so it’s basically the Japanese version of Lord of the Rings. They really should’ve called in Tom Cruise of The Last Samurai fame to be Keanu’s mentor simply so he could teach him to yell Sake!!!!!!

This movie was terrible and gets a rating of WACK partly due to the fact that it cost me $14 to see it. Avoid it at all costs!