Wednesday, June 10, 2015

SPEED 2 Month 2015 Day 10: Upkeep on the 47 Other Things



The keeper of A Leaf on the Wind has been somewhat under the weather of late, hence the brief lapse in daily topics for SPEED 2 Month. That hasn’t meant I haven’t been able to watch some truly lackluster film projects, of which will be covered over the next few days.

First, the Day 10 edition will cover a brief foray into something that should never, ever be seen by anyone. Sadly, it was never released to the big screen so it cannot defrock SPEED 2 from being King of the Hill, here. I picked it up after posting the retrospective of the lovely Sandra Bullock’s career, thinking it’d be a fun comparison to the titular focus of the month. It has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with the film she appeared in, but it had no problems using name recognition to try and get a few bucks out of it.

THE NET 2.0 is one direct-to-dvd mess that only the most foolhardy or brainless need waste their time with, as the plot make not one lick of sense, nor does much of the acting. It’s got nice scenery, when it’s not being reused to keep costs down on this turkey, but stay the hell away from this thing. It’s the dumbest, worst, most inept thing I’ve seen since someone made me watch FRINGE season 3.

Once I recovered from watching the atrocity that was THE NET 2.0, I plunked in a film I’d seen before, but was brought up on a recent From the Hip podcast as being one of the costliest movies produced. Starring the hero of SPEED himself, Keanu Reeves, 47 RONIN made waves all through Hollyweird because of the length of time it took to be released, reshot, rewritten, redubbed, re-edited, re… well, you get the idea.

 
Finally released for the last week of 2013, 47 RONIN quickly disappeared from screens across the country as Universal Pictures refused to have anything to do with their 175 million dollar baby. A loss-leader this giant anchor wasn’t, as even the trade press had nothing but incongruous things to say about it, including before the release. I’m not sure what they think could have been wrong with it; it’s a fine experience in filmmaking. Of what not to do.

Let’s take a look at the general plot of the movie, which is based on a Japanese historical event during the days of feudal Shogunates. The movie takes actual events, of which some are likely not completely known, skews it to fit their own ‘mystical’ land of Japan, rife with witches, dragons and other creatures, then to add a not-so-small insult, tacks on the half-white character that Keanu plays, just to get the stupid Americans to be able to watch the movie without having Lite Beer offered up as incentive to sit in the theatre. Is that harsh? It’s obviously what Universal thought, as they needed to make a great story even greater, in their eyes. Are you that insipid, you movie-going American public? Do you need a white guy to play a completely fictional role when there are at least 50 other characters in the movie that could be even more exciting to watch? What’s happened between 2000, when CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON was released, and now? Stories set in Japan are not as good as those set in China? Has the American film watcher forgotten about the great Akira Kurosawa? Universal Pictures, what the hell is wrong with you? If I was a Japanese citizen and had some knowledge of country history, I’d be offended and appalled at just the addition of Keanu, besides the other hideous story elements added for more “punch”.

 I’ll put it in perspective. Take the Boston Tea Party incident of 1773, an incredibly important historical event in the formation of the United States. Instead of colonists boarding a ship in Boston harbor, let’s move the entire story to San Francisco in say, 1900, make the ship a clandestine invading force of Chinese monkey-people and the hero is a Mexican bandito with a dubious Mexican background played by, oh, let’s say Clive Owen. Why not Clive Owen, he’s big and strong and masculine and can play everything that he’s told to play. I’ve seen him perform as a Roman soldier and as Ernest Hemingway, so there’s nothing he can’t do, right? He could probably know Kung-Fu too, if he was paid to.

See the righteous nonsense there? Blah, Universal Pictures, you bloody suck.

The story of the 47 Ronin is a fairly simple one, with all the gloriousness of Japanese feudal society and as much swordplay as can be imagined. The Shogun is holding a reception with two other daimyo’s, Asano and Kira. During the reception, Asano assaults Kira and is sentenced to seppuku by the Shogun. The samurai of Asano are now ronin and are not allowed retribution until one year is up. After the year, the ronin gather together and kill the daimyo Kira, fulfilling their code and honoring their former lord. The Shogun allows them all to commit seppuku, in accordance with the code of the samurai, allowing them all to die with honor.

There have been at least two other filmed versions of the 47 Ronin, one in 1941 and one in 1994. I guarantee that both are better in numerous ways than this version, which is not entirely a terrible film, just a terrible version of a great tale that doesn’t need much to embellish it, even for today’s moviegoers. Even so, it fits within what the Japanese call Chushingura, fictionalized stories of the 47 Ronin. So, where I may find effrontery and insult, it may not actually be seen as such by fans of Chushingura.

47 RONIN betters SPEED 2 in so many ways I had a hard time picking it to make the comparison. It’s not a bad movie, just not a very good one. It’s completely watchable, but it misses too many cues to be a great film, sadly. While I have no plans to ever view it again, I wouldn’t be abject to watching it again if it popped on the boob tube.

For Day 11, a Kevin Smith film of ill repute.

No comments:

Post a Comment