Blade of the 47 Ronin

It's campy, it's cliched, it's corny, and it's fun. The key to watching this movie is to not take anything seriously. It's filled with just about every martial arts trope there is, and that just adds to its charm.

The basic plot (if you want to call it that), is that a magic using "witch" will wipe out all the samurai remaining in the 21st century unless he is killed by a descendant of the 47 ronin. Pretty thin, but it sets up the story for lots of cheesy dialog, and copious amounts of martial arts mayhem. If you sit back and just go with the flow the movie is enjoyable (but not great by any stretch of the imagination), and a fun way to pass a couple of hours.

Thought this was going to be a good martial arts movie but it just didn't get there. Acting was okay but some real corny parts. When you think of martial arts movies, you think of respect and honor. The character Omani was pretty annoying. She didn't do as she was told and lacked discipline. There was a fight scene which was a practice and the fighting was poor. Clearly did not make them look like elite killers. The positive was having Dustin Nguyen and legend Mark Degascos in a movie together. Overall disappointing considering how decent the first one was. Probably should have rewatched the first one.

The original 2013 film 47 Ronin had astounding visuals but lacked a compelling story. Despite the original film not being a good film I enjoyed it. This film, Blade of the 47 Ronin, has none of those great visuals, and the story is far from gripping. Featured throughout this film is poor amateurish cinematography, uninspired and irrational writing, with poor acting. Teresa Ting's character Onami is the most captivating character in the film, the others for me were forgettable. The stunt team absolutely carried this film, they did a great job with the fight scenes throughout and was the only reason I watched it through. That said, I hated the fake CGI blood and would have rather had no blood at all. This seems like it would have been better as a fully fleshed out 10ish episode series rather than a film sequel.

What happens when you take a decent movie about Japanese lore and try to make it a John Wick, girl power knock-off? This inane piece of garbage where John Wick is actually mentioned. I gave it two stars because the fight scenes were tolerable, unlike the writing, acting and dialogue. This is a horrible grab for views using a popular movie. If you feel the need to watch, just go in knowing that there is nothing really redeeming about it and could be entertaining if you are doing other stuff and only pay half attention to it. There are better things to watch on Netflix if you want a strong female herion.

This should not be a "sequel" at all, it is not worthy in the slightest. 47 Ronin was a great film, this 'sequel' is a disservice. Starship Troopers 2 was a better sequel to the original than this -- and thats not saying much.

Blade is totally uninspiring, boring, not sure why I am still watching. For now its on the "watch a bit more of it later" roster; movies that take me 3 or 4 days to finish. Something to have running while I fall asleep.

Look at it this way, I'm 25 minutes in before I decide "you know what? I'm going to look up the rating in imdb before I continue at this point." Just wanting to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else. With a 4.7 right now, it appears we are in agreement.