FILM REVIEW OF ''47 RONIN" (2013)

Ethnocentrism occurs when one culture appropriates something from another culture and then attempts to enhance it.  The latest version of the legendary Genroku Akō incident, the tragic 18^th century Japanese account of samurai warriors avenging their fallen leader, displays all the vestiges of ethnocentrism.  Mind you, the Japanese produced six previous cinematic adaptations about their historic milestone before Hollywood tampered with it.  For the record, those movies were “The 47 Ronin” (1941), “Chûshingura” (1958), “Chushingura” (1962), “The Fall of Ako Castle” (1978), “47 Ronin” (1994) and “The Last Chushingura (2010).  Presumably, Hollywood must have felt that this constituted an ideal opportunity to produce its own spin on this venerable story.  Not surprisingly, Universal Studios has taken considerable liberties with the material.  Not only has the studio embroidered this renowned tale of honor with outlandish supernatural elements, specifically demons and witchcraft, but it also has added a half-breed European supporting character to the yarn.  Presumably, Universal must have felt that attracting an American audience to a $200-million plus film primarily about the Japanese would only recoup its costs if a major American actor got mixed up in it.  Keanu Reeves of “The Matrix” trilogy appears as the improbable white guy who sets the catastrophic events of the Akō vendetta into motion as well as dictates how the Japanese can resolve their dreadful predicament.  Freshman director Carl Rinsch and “Wanted” scenarist Chris Morgan with “Snow White and the Huntsman” scribe Hossein Amini have fashioned a conventional chronicle of samurai versus samurai, with a grim finale that precludes any thought of a sequel.  If you know nothing about the outrageous revisions that the filmmakers have imposed on the most celebrated instance of the samurai code of honor, you will probably enjoy this scenic saga about sword and sorcery a lot more.  Imagine what any important event in American history would emerge as if a Japanese individual interfered with it and you’ll have a good idea about “47 Ronin.”

 “47 Ronin” (** OUT OF ****) takes place in feudal Japan in the 1700s.  Lord Asano (Min Tanaka of “Black Dawn”) of the Ako province adopts a wandering teenager, Kai (Keanu Reeves), who is the son of a British sailor and a Japanese peasant.  The boy’s mother abandoned him, and demons raised him.  Eventually Kai ran away from them and Lord Asano took him in as one of his own.  Kai grew up with Asano’s daughter, Mika (Kô Shibasaki of “One Missed Call”), and the two become romantically attracted to each other.  Meanwhile, since Kai is a half-breed, he cannot serve Lord Asano as a samurai.  Instead, he functions as the equivalent of a scout.  The first major scene shows him slaying a massive beast that resembles an enormous buffalo with tree branches for antlers.  Naturally, another samurai warrior, Yasuno (Masayoshi Haneda of “Emperor”), claims credit for the kill, but Asano’s number one samurai, Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada of “The Wolverine”), knows the truth.  Later, Lord Asano welcomes his supreme leader, Shogun Tsunayoshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa of “Mortal Combat”), to his palatial estate along with his chief rival, Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano of “Thor: The Dark World”), from the nearby Nagato province.  The villainous Kira conspires with the aid of a demonic, shape-shifting witch, (Rinko Kikuchi of “Pacific Rim”), to drug Asano into attacking him.  The witch uses a bulbous spider to deliver a drug across Asano’s lips while he is asleep so that he awakens and imagines that Kira is raping his daughter.  Appalled by his own behavior, Asano follows the dictates of the Shogun in committing ritual suicide.  Ôishi blames himself for letting these events transpire, especially after Kai warned him about the witch.  Everybody but Asano and his daughter treats Kai with utter contempt.  After Asano slashes his belly open with a knife, Ôishi completes the ordeal by decapitating his master.  The heartless Shogun banishes all Asano’s samurai who are now designated as ronin.  At the same time, Kira sells Kai into slavery where Kai becomes a highly prized combatant in arena showdowns.  The Shogun commands Mika to marry Kira after mourning the death of her father for a year.  Kira has Ôishi thrown into a dungeon where he spends the next year.  Eventually, after he is released, the vengeance driven Ôishi assembles the remaining samurai and persuades Kai to join them as they set out to deal with the murderous Kira.

Compared with other samurai sages, “47 Ronin” is fairly routine stuff.  The battle sequences lack grandeur, and the sword play is pretty dull.  The massive ritual suicide at the end isn’t exactly what American audiences will enjoy.  Imagine “Star Wars” ending with everybody eviscerating themselves at fade-out and you have a good idea what to expect.  This big-budgeted spectacle also suffers from second-rate special effects.  Most of the sprawling mountain backdrops are clearly computer-generated, while the swirling witch’s dragon looks like something out of a Chinatown carnival.  Presumably, Rinsch and his writers decided to rely on sorcery because nobody knows for certain why Asano attacked his guest in real-life.  The way that Asano is poisoned is reminiscent of how the Japanese girl died at the hands of Ninjas in the James Bond movie “You Only Live Twice.”  In “You Only Live Twice,” a ninja hid in the rafters, dangled a thread above the heroine’s mouth, and dribbled poison down it.  The witch in “47 Ronin” behaves less spectacularly than the witch in “Snow White and the Huntsman” that co-scripter Hossein Amini penned.  The art direction, production design, and cinematography make “47 Ronin” look more impressive than its ersatz plot.  Interestingly enough, this film didn’t impress Japanese audiences, and Universal has already written it off as a financial disaster.  Ultimately, “47 Ronin” qualifies as a tolerable movie with guts but little gusto.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL" (2008)

The landmark 1951 science fiction fable “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (**** out of ****) concerned an extraterrestrial emissary named Klaatu (Michael Rennie of TV’s “The Third Man”) who came to Washington, D.C., in a flying saucer to warn Earthlings that they must not “apply atomic energy to spaceships that will create a threat to the peace and security of other planets.” In the dreary, special effects laden remake, the intergalactic Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) shows up in a huge sphere in Manhattan’s Central Park to warn Earthlings that they have treated the planet with the same lack of respect that they treat each other and have wrought so much damage that they must be obliterated. Hmn, hasn’t Al Gore already said that without a spaceship and a monstrous robot in his recent documentary "An Inconvenient Truth?"

Environmentalists will no doubt applaud the remake for its global warming message, but popcorn-minded audiences aching for thrills and chills galore may find this high-minded but heavy-handed remake bland to the bone. Mind you, “Exorcism of Emily Rose” director Scott Derrickson and “Last Castle” scenarist David Scrapa have loaded “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (*1/2 out of ****) remake with more action than its relatively tame predecessor. Nevertheless, this superficial sci-fi saga generates little drama or suspense in what amounts to an anemic disaster movie with top-tier special effects. The 8 foot robot Gort that accompanied Klaatu now towers 28 feet tall and it boasts another weapon in it arsenal along with his molten laser beam eyeballs. The filmmakers stage several over-the-top aerial raids on the sphere that recall similar tactics in Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day." Unfortunately, these pyrotechnical displays add little substance to an already insubstantial film.

Pretty Jennifer Connelly gives the best performance, while Keanu Reeves remains as inarticulate as ever as the alien who wants to address world leaders. He was a hundred times better in last year’s shoot’em up “Street Kings.” Kathy Bates gives her best Hilary Clinton impersonation and dresses as tastefully as Sarah Palin. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” springs no surprises with its ecological message.

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” contains a prologue that the original lacked. In 1928, a lone mountain climber (Keanu Reeves of “The Matrix”)in India discovers a shimmering globe in the snow and touches it. When he awakens later from the shock that the object dealt him, he finds a hole has been burnt in his glove and a tiny patch of skin has been removed. The nasty sphere came to harvest the mountain climber's DNA so that it could clone a human body. The action fast-forwards to contemporary times as a military communication satellite detects an object streaking towards Earth with a crash point 78 minutes away in Manhattan. The government assembles an elite team of scientists to deal with the aftermath of this catastrophe since they cannot prevent it. Ignorant government agents come banging on the door of Princeton astrobiologist professor Dr. Helen Benson (Oscar winning Best Actress Jennifer Connelly of “A Beautiful Mind”) and hustle her off to a helicopter and flight to New York City. Initially, the military briefing sequence reminded me more of Ronald Neame's "Meteor" (1979) Michael Bay's "Armageddon" (1998), Mimi Leder's "Deep Impact" (1998)

When Helen isn’t teaching, she is a single mom to her adorably obnoxious African-American stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith of "The Pursuit of Happyness") who hasn’t gotten over the death of his father in combat. Jacob sasses his mom, wears his hair in tassels, and hinders more than helps her later in the action. Of course, everything is forgiven in the fourth quarter when he realizes the error of his ways. Anyway, everybody reacts with shock when the alien spacecraft touches down without turning New York City in a colossal crater. Like his classic predecessor, Klaatu emerges and a trigger-happy U.S. Army soldier pumps a slug into him just as he approaches Helen in a Hazmat outfit, splattering red alien blood on her mask. About that time, a gargantuan robot named Gort emerges from the sphere and emits a laser beam blast that turns all weapons into dust. Klaatu halts Gort from further destruction and lets the authorities rush him to a top-secret surgical suite where a doctor digs out the slug. The doctor informs them all that an embryonic human is swaddled beneath layers of placenta. This human matures rapidly into Keanu Reeves, though the filmmakers neglect to bring up the fate of 1928 mountain climber. In the remake, Klaatu enjoys greater powers than his predecessor. He can use his mind to incapacitate his captors and he does so during a lie detector scene that is prominently features in the trailer. Happily, Klaatu's interrogator is the same size as the alien so Klaatu can don his suit and don and saunter off the military installation.

Since the president and vice president have been evacuated to an undisclosed location, Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates of “Primary Colors”) greets Klaatu and refuses to turn him loose despite his having done nothing wrong. Instead, the scientists rush him off for a lie-detector test, but the resourceful Klaatu engineers an easy escape and hits the road with Helen. Jacob joins them and does everything that he can to undermine his mom and Klaatu. Eventually, Helen takes Klaatu to meet Nobel Prize-winning Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese of “Monty Python” fame in a cameo) who received his accolades for biological altruism. The blackboard scene from the original is replicated here, but Klaatu’s dialogue with Barnhardt focuses on the welfare of planet Earth not the escalating arms race. According to Klaatu, there is a shortage of planets for sustaining life and humans have devastated the Earth too such a degree that they must be wiped out. Barnhardt pleads with Klaatu for the future of humanity; he argues that the brink of destruction will prompt humans to change their ways.

Meanwhile, the military abduct Gort, imprison the robot in a silo, and try to cut through its impervious biological skin with a diamond drill. They fail miserably, but the gigantic robot spawns the synthetic equivalent of locust and the locust spread in clouds to destroy mankind and man-made structures. In the original, Gort acted as a policeman for the aliens, while he can reduce himself into a swarm of locust. The military were able to encase Gort but they didn't take him off to a secret army base.

Okay, neither Robert Wise’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” nor Derrickson’s remake adhered to author Harry Bates’s original pulp short story “Farewell to the Master.” Of course, Wise’s “Earth Stood Still” served as a cautionary anti-Cold War tale about the paranoia of nuclear proliferation as well as an allegorical Christ tale. After all, Klaatu called himself Mr. Carpenter and rose from the dead. Derrickson’s spin has little in common aside from the bare bones basics of Edmund North’s screenplay. Keanu Reeves is ideally cast as the monosyllabic Klaatu and he knows how to deal with nosy traffic cops, but his Klaatu seems a little behind the 8-ball when he realizes that his strategy may not be best. While “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is new, this Keanu Reeves rehash is not an improved version of the timeless original.