Once upon a time, a small band of scrappy fighters had to forge their way through a magical landscape against incredible odds.
If you didn’t get enough of that in the new “Hobbit,” then by all means check out “47 Ronin,” which substitutes ancient Japan for Middle Earth and samurai warriors for dwarves.
This retelling of a Japanese legend of exiled soldiers on a vengeance mission is blown out into a fairly mechanical Hollywood product by first-time feature director Carl Rinsch, who careens from one set piece to another with a blend of passable 3-D and dialogue so wooden, it seems dubbed.
In the middle of it, there’s Keanu Reeves, in his first mainstream role in years, as the hero, Kai. Abandoned as a child in a supernatural forest, he’s taken in by a kindly samurai master (Min Tanaka), who raises him as a sort of sword-wielding Cinderella alongside daughter Mika (Ko Shibasaki of “Battle Royale,” with little to do here). Their friendship deepens as they grow up, but as Kai tells her, “You have your place and I have mine.”
His place, for much of the first half, is pretty marginal. If you’re going to have Keanu in your action movie, for God’s sake, put him in the middle of things. He knows kung fu.
When the master is cut down by a diabolical warlord (Tadanobu Asano), his samurai are expelled, rendering them “ronin,” or masterless warriors. Their captain, Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), is thrown into a pit; Kai is sold into slavery.
You can tell a lot about this movie by its marketing focus on head-to-toe tattooed artist Rick Genest, who figured prominently in its trailer and poster art. This human skeleton appears for, seriously, the blink of an eye. But it’s clear someone thinks he’s the most fabulous-looking thing about it.
This is a disservice, because all the visuals in “47 Ronin” are arresting — epic ancient Japanese with some wild flourishes. A roomful of gold-robed, gold-eyed monks attack one samurai in an elegant hallucination sequence; a witch (Rinko Kikuchi) wears a flowing green silk dress that twists into the air, turning into a dragon’s body. And the geishas! Their eyebrows are painted on a half-inch from their hairlines. It’d all make a great video, but it doesn’t hang together well enough to make a functional movie.
As Oishi and Kai plan a revenge attack with the loyal ronin, evil lord Kira (Asano) plots with Kikuchi’s witch to force Mika to marry him.
It all begins to seem like an Asian meditation on Super Mario, as Kai and company must ascend various levels (fire, dragon, bad theater) to rescue the princess. But there’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.
Which is too bad, because it’s fleetingly good (for some of us, anyway) to see Reeves again. An actor who’s been spending much of his time in the fringes of indie cinema lately, he seems almost like an afterthought in this big-budget movie banking on his name.