Keanu Reeves' '47 Ronin' Bombing: Universal Prepares for Major Loss

[pantybulge69]

i saw it last night and thought it was just ok...a couple of nice action/CGI scenes but nothing extraordinary about 47 Ronin.
it just didn't wow or impress me at all....the biggest knock was that we are forced to see it in 3-D (very limited theaters in regular viewing) and it's not nowhere near worth the 3-D viewing/price. catch it on blu-ray DVD rental and save.

secondly, keanu reeves acting was just horrible! what a stiff,lackluster role play!i never got into his disinteresting character at all. i felt the studio just rented a famous face to play a role another less heralded could have easily done.
i'd rate it a 5.5 at best.

[pantybulge69]

Look at the field "47 Ronin" is up against(just "The Hobbit: TDoS" & "Mandela" alone, plus "American Hustle')....
Probably would've fared better as "dry-period" feature as opposed to Christmas or Summer premiere...

add Wolf of Wall Street to that mix as well. i thought it was a great, hilarious,engaging film.

[KorbinDallas]

More on the history of the story of 47 Ronin

The play has been made into a movie at least six times in Japan,[34] the earliest starring Onoe Matsunosuke. The film's release date is questioned, but placed between 1910 and 1917. It has been aired on the Jidaigeki Senmon Channel (Japan) with accompanying benshi narration. In 1941, the Japanese military commissioned director Kenji Mizoguchi, who would later direct Ugetsu, to make Genroku Chūshingura. They wanted a ferocious morale booster based upon the familiar rekishi geki ("historical drama") of The Loyal 47 Ronin. Instead, Mizoguchi chose for his source Mayama Chūshingura, a cerebral play dealing with the story. The film was a commercial failure, having been released in Japan one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese military and most audiences found the first part to be too serious, but the studio and Mizoguchi both regarded it as so important that Part Two was put into production, despite Part One's lukewarm reception. Renowned by postwar scholars lucky to have seen it in Japan, the film wasn't shown in America until the 1970s.[35]

The 1962 film version directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, Chūsingura, is most familiar to Western audiences.[34] In it, Toshiro Mifune appears in a supporting role as spearman Tawaraboshi Genba. Mifune was to revisit the story several times in his career. In 1971 he appeared in the 52-part television series Daichūshingura as Ōishi, while in 1978 he appeared as Lord Tsuchiya in the epic Swords of Vengeance (Ako-Jo danzetsu).

Many Japanese television shows, including single programs, short series, single seasons, and even year-long series such as Daichūshingura and the more recent NHK Taiga drama Genroku Ryōran, recount the events of the Forty-seven Ronin. Among both films and television programs, some are quite faithful to the Chūshingura, while others incorporate unrelated material or alter details. In addition, gaiden dramatize events and characters not in the Chūshingura. Kon Ichikawa directed another version in 1994. In 2004, Saito Mitsumasa directed a 9-episode mini-series starring Matsudaira Ken, who also starred in a 1999 49-episode TV series of the Chūshingura entitled Genroku Ryoran. In Hirokazu Koreeda's 2006 film Hana yori mo naho, the events of the Forty-seven Ronin story was used as a backdrop, one of the ronin being a neighbour of the protagonists.

[Stavros]

John Frankenheimer tried to make the story the moral centre of his film Ronin (199 and failed, largely because the film was too ambitious, though it is good in parts. It comes in the dialogue between DeNiroBob and the great French actor 'Michael Lonsdale'.

[broncofan]

Still, Rottentomatoes has the advantage of links to the actual reviews, so that you can draw your own conclusion.

I agree with your analysis, except for one thing. The sensitivity of imdb ratings may be part of its strength if you are very familiar with it. Even though the votes are by laymen, these votes are the average of thousands of votes on a numbered basis. I have seen rotten tomatoes movies with 80% rating that are bad but I don't think I've seen anything with an imdb over 8 that is bad. About 7.4 and up is usually a pretty strong movie.

As you rightly pointed out, the all or nothing rotten tomatoes system seems to reward something that is above average but does not take too many risks.

[fuzzunoisedk]

Stupid time to put it in theatres someone had the wrong head up there when they desided to release it up against small dwarfes and a certain Hobbit.....you get rhe point. Should have been released mid february 2014 where people had Money Again. We should have the Asians make their own Samurai movies way better and cooler.

I recommand Jet Li Warlords. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0913968/...nm_flmg_act_11

[christianxxx]

i went to see this piece of shit movie with my parents and it was so brutally bad. the previews are all action and then the movie is a fucking love story. and did i mention that it moves forward at the slowest pace imaginable. summing up this movie in one word - interminable. The previews promise a plethora of mythical beasts.....no sir. OMG it was so so so so bad. ugh Keanu you got me again, you fuck.

[Deimos]

i doubt he has never directed a feature before. he may have directed a feature film when he was in school or worked as a second unit director or assistant director to a feature. it's virtually impossible for a studio to even green light a director who has literally zero experience directing a feature.

if this is his first studio film, i can also tell you he wasn't really the director.

man of tai chi was his first studio film as director

[rockabilly]

Guess he should have done " Bill & Teds Epic Quest " instead

[Females+Shemales]

Is anybody really surprised? I got nothing against him personally, but Keanu is one of the worst actors there is. He's as one dimensional as you can get.