On Blu-ray/DVD: THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017); CROOKED HOUSE (2017); and BEYOND SKYLINE (2017)

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER
(UK/Ireland - 2017)

Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (DOGTOOTH) reteams with his LOBSTER star Colin Farrell for this brilliant mindfuck that puts Greek myth and tragedy into modern American suburbia and turns it into a dark and disturbing arthouse horror film. Shot and set in Cincinnati, OH, one of the most quintessentially midwest American cities, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER takes its time, building tension, and methodically tightening its grip. Farrell is Dr. Steven Murphy, a renowned cardiologist with a wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman, who starred with Farrell in last year's THE BEGUILED, which was shot after SACRED DEER but released first), teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and young son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Unbeknownst to his family, Steven frequently meets with Martin (DUNKIRK's Barry Keoghan), a polite but troubled 16-year-old. The nature of their relationship isn't revealed until much later, but it appears to be a Big Brother or a mentor-type situation, as Martin's father is dead and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) doesn't seem to be all there in the two years since his passing. After Steven invites Martin to meet his family, the boy's neediness escalates and he starts showing up at Steven's office unannounced, demanding he come to his mother's house for dinner, watch GROUNDHOG DAY with him ("It was my dad's favorite movie") and psychologically manipulating and slowly seducing Kim. Then Martin drops the hammer and Steven is forced to contend with the extent of what the awkward teenager has in store for him and his family.

To say anymore would involve far too many spoilers, but THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is hypnotic in ways we rarely see since the loss of Stanley Kubrick. The shot compositions, the long, static takes, and the cold, antiseptic interiors of the hospital and the Steadicam prowling its endless hallways like some sort of Overlook Medical Center all cast that vividly Kubrick spell, at least until the third act when things take a more pronounced Michael Haneke-inspired turn. Lanthimos has fashioned a film that is stilted and awkward by design. These characters are recognizably typical American people but they often talk like they're from another world, effectively emphasizing and almost darkly satirizing the cold detachment so vital to Kubrick. People say inappropriate things with little or no provocation: everyone is fixated on Steven's "beautiful" hands and they're mentioned in practically every other scene. "Do you have hair under your arms?" Bob asks Martin. It's the kind of movie where Martin's mother will start sucking Steven's thumb after he declines dessert and when he's uncomfortable and tries to leave, she sternly intones "I won't let you leave until you've tried my tart." It's the kind of movie where Steven impulsively tells his nine-year-old son that as a child, he once jerked off his drunk, passed-out stepfather ("The sheets were covered in sperm..."). And what prompts Steven to tell a colleague (Bill Camp) at a swanky gala hospital event "Our daughter started menstruating last week..."? Dysfunction is everywhere and the perfection of the American dream is all surface. Steven and Anna love one another but their sex life is bizarre--she strips and lies motionless, almost corpse-like, while he gropes himself, and it's a technique Kim mimics when she tries to initiate her idea of sex with an uninterested Martin, indicating that she's probably watched her parents. The film pulls no punches with its harrowing finale, and like any Lanthimos film, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is decidedly not for everyone (it's closer in spirit to DOGTOOTH than the darkly comedic THE LOBSTER, the latter seeming downright commercial in retrospect). But it's filled with outstanding performances by actors tasked with difficult roles (especially the quietly remarkable turn by Keoghan, who's even better here than he was as the doomed George in DUNKIRK), spellbinding camera work and cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis, and a unique and uncompromising vision on the part of its creators. Lanthimos is one of the masters of today's cinema. (R, 121 mins)



CROOKED HOUSE
(UK - 2017)

Kenneth Branagh's middling remake of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS became a surprise hit in the fall of 2017, but another Agatha Christie adaptation arrived a couple of weeks later and no one knew about it. That's a shame because CROOKED HOUSE, while still flawed, is an overall better film despite Sony's apparent disinterest in promoting it, opting to dump it on 16 screens and VOD with no publicity at all (it wasn't even a theatrical release in the UK, where it premiered on Channel 5). Christie's novel, published in 1949, has fallen through the cracks over the decades even though it was one of the legendary writer's personal favorites of her work. She was especially proud of the incredibly uncompromising ending, which could be why there's never been a CROOKED HOUSE movie until now (there was a four-part BBC radio drama in 2008), and why this adaptation might've been a tough sell for mainstream audiences, even with the presence of some fine actors and a script co-written by GOSFORD PARK screenwriter and DOWNTON ABBEY creator Julian Fellowes. Fellowes' screenplay dated back to 2011, when Neil LaBute was originally attached to direct and Julie Andrews, Gabriel Byrne, and Gemma Arterton set to star. That fell apart in pre-production and the film eventually got made several years later with Gilles Paquet-Brenner (SARAH'S KEY, DARK PLACES) at the helm, reworking Fellowes' script (RAPA NUI writer Tim Rose Price is also credited) and losing all of the initially attached cast. Crooked House is populated by some of Christie's most loathsome characters, whose narcissism and misanthropy are obviously what initially drew LaBute (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS) to the project. Paquet-Brenner tones that down a bit, but CROOKED HOUSE still contains some of the most bitterly sniping repartee in any Christie work.

Charles Hayward (Max Irons) is a British spy-turned-private eye in 1950s London (the film moves the book's setting ahead about a decade). He's hired by former flame Sophia Leonides (Stefanie Martini) to investigate the death of her grandfather Aristide (Gino Picciano), an obscenely wealthy tycoon and diabetic who was poisoned when his insulin was replaced with clear liquid eye medication. The chief suspect is his young trophy wife Brenda (Christina Hendricks), a Vegas showgirl who's of course treated with disdain and scorn by his greedy heirs, all of whom stay at the gargantuan family mansion to form one of the most dysfunctional families in the Christie universe. There's Aristide's eldest son and Sophia's father Philip (Julian Sands) and his washed-up ham actress wife Magda (Gillian Anderson); their obnoxious teenage son Eustace (Preston Nyman) and already cynical young daughter Josephine (Honor Kneafsey); Aristide's pompous youngest son Roger (Christian McKay) and his wife Clemency (Amanda Abbington); and Lady Edith (Glenn Close), the spinster sister of Aristide's late first wife and the only remotely likable one of the bunch aside from the wise-beyond-her-years Josephine. Lady Edith knows the entire family is a scheming nest of vipers and tries to help Hayward in his investigation, which is eventually taken over by dogged Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp), who decides Hayward's feelings for Sophia are compromising his ability to handle things on his own. Like THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM, another recent British period mystery, CROOKED HOUSE starts out clunky and uneven but gets much better as it goes along, especially once Taverner takes charge and puts his foot down with this family of assholes. The film gets a big boost from Stamp, who still can still command the screen and is a much more interesting actor than the bland Irons (the dreadful BITTER HARVEST), who's just not believable as a former spy and has a way to go before he's on the level of his dad Jeremy. CROOKED HOUSE admirably doesn't cushion the blow of its ending, but part of me wonders how astonishingly mean-spirited this would've been in the hands of Neil LaBute. As it is, the film stumbles a bit in its first half, with uninteresting flashbacks to Hayward's romance with Sophia in Cairo (who cares?), but once an attempt is made on young Josephine's life and Stamp's Taverner has had it with everyone, it turns into a reasonably solid film that's worth seeing. (PG-13, 115 mins)



BEYOND SKYLINE
(US/China/UK/Canada/Singapore - 2017)

Offering further proof that anything can get a sequel in today's global market, BEYOND SKYLINE arrives seven long years after everyone instantly forgot about SKYLINE, a dismal Brett Ratner-produced alien invasion saga that nevertheless made back its paltry budget and was a big success in Asia, so here we are. Shot in late 2014 and into early 2015, BEYOND SKYLINE didn't enjoy the wide release, multiplex exposure its predecessor was given, instead bowing on VOD with the lowest possible expectations. But strange things can happen when nobody's looking, and while it's not a great movie by any means, BEYOND SKYLINE is a vast improvement, functioning as a de facto mulligan with the original film's writer Liam O'Donnell getting behind the camera (replacing veteran visual effects guys The Brothers Strause, still onboard as two of 29 credited producers) to do it right this time. You can almost sense O'Donnell's eagerness to wipe the slate clean since the two holdover characters from the original (played by different actors here) are killed off almost immediately,  shifting the focus to the PURGE franchise's Frank Grillo as Mark, a lone wolf, alcoholic, widower cop (is there any other kind?) and his rebellious teenage son Trent (Jonny Weston) caught up in the alien invasion. Stuck in the underground subway tunnels, Mark and Trent team up with a few others, including transit employee Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) and homeless guy Sarge (Antonio Fargas), to evade the aliens but they end up being sucked into a hovering ship anyway, where Trent gets his brain ripped out and planted into an alien, thus reborn as an otherworldly species. While in the ship, Mark encounters Elaine, the pregnant survivor from the first film (Samantha Jean replaces Scottie Thompson) whose child is born with alien DNA after fiance Jarrod (Tony Black replaces Eric Balfour) was made part-alien after a brainectomy. Elaine dies giving birth, and Alien Jarrod sabotages the ship, which crashes in Laos, where Mark and Audrey meet a small band of resistance fighters led by Sua (Indonesian action star Iko Uwais). Oddball scientist Harper (Callan Mulvey) surmises that the alien blood of Elaine's child, who's growing at an accelerated rate and looks three years old after two days, might be the key to defeating the aliens, but in the meantime, Mark and Audrey team up with Sua, his sister Kanya (Pamelyn Chee), and eccentric warrior The Chief (Yayan Ruhian) for some one-on-one martial arts showdowns with the invaders, at which point the film moves from THE PURGE: SKYLINE to THE RAID: SKYLINE.

Considering its $15 million budget and a couple of dubious-looking CGI explosions, BEYOND SKYLINE looks as convincingly "big" as any over-budgeted Hollywood blockbuster opening on 3000 screens. Once again, Grillo is a believably hard-as-nails tough guy hero and things get pretty good once RAID stars Uwais and Ruhian turn up midway through. Aside from needing to look at SKYLINE's Wikipedia page because I had no memory of the Elaine/Jarrod storyline, BEYOND SKYLINE pretty much works as a standalone film, and one that's surprisingly engaging considering how needlessly convoluted it is and how bad SKYLINE was (have you ever met a SKYLINE fan?). O'Donnell takes too long getting to them, but anything goes once Uwais and Ruhian are introduced, and when you add Grillo into the mix (which is interesting since Grillo was at one time attached to the still-unmade American remake of THE RAID), along with some unabashed, over-the-top R-rated violence, BEYOND SKYLINE becomes something SKYLINE never was: entertaining. (R, 106 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: MINE (2017); BITTER HARVEST (2017); and ALTITUDE (2017)

MINE
(Spain/Italy/US - 2017)

Even though he showed himself to be a credible actor as the Winklevoss twins in 2010's THE SOCIAL NETWORK and other serious films like J. EDGAR and THE BIRTH OF A NATION, it's easy to see what drew Armie Hammer to a project like MINE. It's the kind of Acting-with-a-capital-A exercise toward which an actor generally known for undemanding commercial fare like THE LONE RANGER and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. gravitates when they want to demonstrate some real chops. But after establishing its nail-biting premise that echoes a variety of other films (127 HOURS, BURIED, PHONE BOOTH, OPEN WATER, THE SHALLOWS, LIBERTY STANDS STILL), MINE blows up in Hammer's face thanks to the hackneyed choices made by the Italian filmmaking team "Fabio & Fabio"--writers/directors Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro. In North Africa, Marine sniper Mike Stevens (Hammer) and his buddy Tommy (Tom Cullen) are perched atop a cliff overlooking a desert wedding, with orders to take out a man (Agustin Rodriguez) believed to be the leader of a major Middle East terror cell. Mike botches the operation when he gets a clear shot and hesitates. A skirmish results and Mike and Tommy are left to walk through a long stretch of desert to get to the nearest safe haven--a stretch that a discarded sign in the sand warns of being filled with mines. Sure enough, a cocky Tommy steps on one and it blows off his legs. Taking a step to help him, Mike feels a click under his left foot and realizes he's stepped on one as well. With Tommy soon out of the picture and sandstorms plus, it would seem, retaliatory petulance over the bungled mission preventing an attempted extraction for 52 hours, Mike must keep his left foot planted on the mine, standing as still as possible until help arrives.

That's the first 20 minutes of MINE, and it's around the 21st minute that it falls apart. There's significant suspense to be generated by Mike's predicament, but Fabio & Fabio instead have him reflect--on his fiancee (Annabelle Wallis), his cancer-victim mother (Juliet Aubrey), his drunkard father (Geoff Bell), whose physical and psychological abuse sent Mike running off to escape to the military in the first place, and all the things he should've done differently, like Dewey Cox having to think about his entire life before he goes on stage. MINE works just fine when it deals directly with Mike battling thirst, the elements, exhaustion, and unseen threats in the darkness at night, but that momentum is constantly interrupted either by hallucinations or the periodic appearances of a good-natured berber (Clint Dyer), who gives him the equivalent of pep talks with a bunch of inspiring platitudes straight of a self-help book. The shifts are jarring, to say the least, and the attempts to expand the story with cutaways and people real and imagined only lead to tedium, with Fabio & Fabio seemingly unaware that MINE is working just fine when the camera's planted on the star. Hammer gives this everything he's got, but his above-and-beyond efforts are sabotaged by his indecisive and unfocused filmmakers. (Unrated, 106 mins)



BITTER HARVEST
(Canada - 2017)

After a long career spent in exploitation movies and television, one gets the feeling that journeyman Canadian director George Mendeluk saw BITTER HARVEST as a magnum opus of sorts, a serious, sweeping historical epic that showed the world that a hired gun pushing 70 was perhaps a secret auteur who just never got his chance. To that end, BITTER HARVEST is about the best you can expect a serious, sweeping historical epic from the director of 1987's MEATBALLS III to be. It deals with a subject that's only been tackled by a couple of Russian films to this point: the Holodomor, the forced, man-made famine inflicted on the Ukrainian people from 1932-33 by Joseph Stalin (played here by GAME OF THRONES' Gary Oliver, looking suspiciously like a heftier Soup Nazi), after he declared that the farmers of the region must supply grain for all of the Soviet people while leaving themselves hungry and dying. Historians have debated the cause of the genocide and a majority agree that it was Stalin's way of quashing a Ukrainian independence movement, ultimately claiming the lives of anywhere between seven and ten million Ukrainians. Those people deserve something better than BITTER HARVEST, a heavy-handed and insipid melodrama that uses the Holodomor as a backdrop for the old standby of one man trying to get home to the woman he loves. Yuri (Max Irons, Jeremy's son) is a sensitive artist who's uninterested in fighting the Stalin regime like his father Yaroslav (Barry Pepper, not the first actor who comes to mind when you're looking for a Ukrainian guy named Yaroslav) and tough-as-nails grandfather Ivan (a slumming Terence Stamp), who has no use for his soft grandson's fancy book learning. After his father is killed in a skirmish (Pepper exits the film at the 18-minute mark), Yuri marries his childhood sweetheart Natalka (Samantha Barks) and is forced to leave her behind as he goes off to a factory job in Kiev in order to feed his family. Jailed in a gulag and narrowly avoiding a firing squad, Yuri joins the resistance and fights to return home to fight for his wife, family, and community, who are all suffering at the hands of sadistic Stalin strongarm Sergei (Tamer Hassan).

Striving to be DOCTOR ZHIVAGO but saddled with a basic cable budget and left on the shelf since 2013, BITTER HARVEST is cliched and simplistic throughout, as evidenced in a scene where a random stranger sees Yuri sketching and emphatically declares "You are an artist! You have a duty to tell the world the truth!" The film feels like one of those mid '80s Cannon productions where Golan and Globus would indulge in some blatant historical awards-bait but it would still end up looking unmistakably Cannon (THE BERLIN AFFAIR, THE ASSISI UNDERGROUND, HANNA'S WAR). For all its high-minded aspirations of being the definitive chronicle of the Holodomor, BITTER HARVEST is still the kind of movie that has a stock, brutish, '80s-style commie bad guy in Sergei, ends with the hero mowing down scores of Soviet officers with his back to a huge explosion, and credits occasional Steven Seagal director Lauro Chartrand (BORN TO RAISE HELL) with second-unit duties (it's also produced by Oscar-nominated editor Stuart Baird, for some reason). There's nothing wrong with being a career journeyman, and while Mendeluk may have gone into BITTER HARVEST with noble intentions, his best films are still the 1980 Canadian tax-shelter two-fer of STONE COLD DEAD and THE KIDNAPPING OF THE PRESIDENT. (R, 103 mins)



ALTITUDE
(US - 2017)

We last heard from Alex Merkin back in 2013 when he directed two movies--the horror film HOUSE OF BODIES and the Master P-style rapsploitation throwback PERCENTAGE--that quietly debuted on Netflix streaming within two weeks of one another with a level of stealth secrecy usually reserved for likes of the Baltimore Colts packing up and moving to Indianapolis in the middle of the night. Both films appeared to be micro-budgeted home movies with production values that ranked somewhere between "sex tape" and "snuff film." Neither looked to be in a releasable or even finished condition, both featured real actors (Peter Fonda and Terrence Howard in HOUSE OF BODIES, Ving Rhames and Macy Gray in PERCENTAGE), and both were inexplicably produced by Queen Latifah, who also Skyped in a cameo in HOUSE OF BODIES. The only conclusion I could draw at the time--and for a long time, mine was the only external HOUSE OF BODIES review on IMDb, making me seriously wonder if I imagined the whole thing--was that Merkin did such a consistently terrific job cleaning Queen Latifah's pool that she agreed to repay the favor by financing his two movies. PERCENTAGE is merely amateurishly awful, but HOUSE OF BODIES is so bad that it deserves to mentioned in the same breath as THE CREEPING TERROR and MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE. and regardless of Queen Latifah's career accomplishments, the only question I have for her in the event I ever meet her is "HOUSE OF BODIES and PERCENTAGE. Seriously, what the fuck?"

Needless to say, ALTITUDE ("From Director Alex Merkin," the artwork brags, with zero justification at all) is by default a better film, only because it couldn't possibly be worse. Merkin still has no business being on a movie set unless he's manning the craft services table, but ALTITUDE is, at best, barely watchable. Other than scenes involving visual effects, it at least looks like a real movie, albeit a very familiar one. If you've ever wanted to see DIE HARD ON A PLANE with Denise Richards as a hardass FBI agent, here's your chance. A plays-by-her-own-rules hostage negotiator who plays by her own rules once too often, Gretchen Blair (Richards) is busted down to desk duty and sent back to Washington. Her plane is hijacked by a crack team of jewel thieves after one of their own, Terry (Kirk Barker), who made off with their recent take and is of course, seated right next to Blair. Among the baddies are the psychotic ringleader Sadie (Greer Grammer, Kelsey's daughter), who's disguised as a flight attendant, plus burly Rawbones (Chuck Liddell, doing nothing and getting killed off early as usual), and no-nonsense Sharpe (Dolph Lundgren), who takes over as the pilot when Sadie kills the entire crew, including endlessly chipper flight attendant Rick, played by a grown-up Jonathan Lipnicki--yes, the kid from JERRY MAGUIRE--who gets fourth billing for getting his neck snapped 20 minutes in. Blair spends most of the movie hiding in the cargo hold, eliminating Sadie's bad guys one by one and getting little help from a useless air marshal (daytime soap vet Jordi Vilasuso). Somehow opening with seven (!) production company logos and boasting 40 (!!) credited producers, including Lipnicki (!!!), the impossibly cheap-looking ALTITUDE is dire even by the low standards of Redbox-ready DTV/VOD actioners. Lundgren and Liddell are just cashing checks here, but one good thing to say about the whole project is that Grammer is a surprisingly engaging villain and would've held her own in better circumstances. A more ambitious film would've done something with the possibilities of a DIE HARD/PASSENGER 57/NON-STOP scenario with female adversaries. And while Richards isn't particularly well-cast or believable, she doesn't embarrass herself, at least not until she delivers the death blow to Sadie, tossing her out of the plane while quipping "You need to check your altitude, bitch!" (R, 88 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE ART OF THE STEAL (2014) and 47 RONIN (2013)

THE ART OF THE STEAL
(Canada - 2013; US release 2014)

Is there anybody who doesn't like Kurt Russell?  Over his 50-year career, he's managed to become a beloved movie icon without actually having many blockbusters at the box office.  1991's BACKDRAFT and 1994's STARGATE were his biggest hits, and they never broke $80 million in 1990s dollars. Russell's best films tend to cultivate their bases over time, which is a trait he shares with his old friend John Carpenter.  None of their collaborations performed spectacularly on their initial theatrical releases, but 1981's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 1982's THE THING, and 1986's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA are frequently cited as essential films of their decade.  They found their audience on video and cable and they've remained popular over the years as they've been discovered by new generations of fans. Even TOMBSTONE wasn't that massive a hit in 1993.  But it has such a fervent following today that it's hard to believe it topped out at $56 million and never got higher than third place at the box office.  The typical Russell vehicle has been one that did modest business in theaters and became popular video rentals on their way to constant rotation on cable. Russell's filmography reads like TNT's and AMC's weekend schedule over the last 20 years: USED CARS, OVERBOARD, TEQUILA SUNRISE, TANGO & CASH, UNLAWFUL ENTRY, CAPTAIN RON, EXECUTIVE DECISION, ESCAPE FROM L.A., BREAKDOWN, DARK BLUE, POSEIDON, etc. Russell may be the patron saint of "Movie you end up watching until it's over if you find it while channel-surfing."

Now 63, Russell's slowed down in recent years and took a five-year break after his turn as Stuntman Mike in the DEATH PROOF half of GRINDHOUSE before returning in a supporting role as a coach in the barely-released 2012 football drama TOUCHBACK.  It's no surprise that, with today's "$100 million on the opening weekend or it's a bomb" mindset, a new Kurt Russell movie only managed to get released on 60 screens for a $64,000 gross, but THE ART OF THE STEAL is a fun heist comedy that finds the man in vintage "Kurt Russell" form.  Russell is Crunch Calhoun, a veteran wheelman who just spent over five years in a Polish prison after taking the fall for his younger brother Nicky (Matt Dillon) when their last job went south.  Nicky is a slick con artist who's just made off with a priceless Georges Seurat painting but did so by cutting out his partner (Dax Ravina) who demands compensation from Crunch. Crunch touches base with Nicky and they reassemble the old crew--French forger Guy (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Paddy the Rolodex (Kenneth Welsh), with new additions Francie (Jay Baruchel), and Crunch's greedy wife Lola (Katheryn Winnick), on a $20 million plan to get a rare Gutenberg-printed Gospel According to James out of a Montreal customs house and smuggle it over the US border into Detroit, all with an incompetent Interpol agent (THE DAILY SHOW's Jason Jones) and a reluctant informant (Terence Stamp) on their tail. Of course, double and triple-crosses transpire and there's really nothing here plot-wise you haven't seen in a ton of other caper movies, but the Russell-led ensemble works very well together and writer/director Jonathan Sobol throws in some offbeat touches (like Ravina's brawny goon being a Seurat connoisseur), and numerous snappy exchanges and bits of quotable dialogue (Crunch and Nicky referring to lecherous Paddy as "Uncle Fucks-a-lot" and "Sloppy Balls McCarthy"; Francie putting on a fake Amish beard and telling a border officer that he's starring in a Broadway musical version of WITNESS! "with an exclamation point").  The heist itself is fairly routine and the story rather slight, but THE ART OF THE STEAL is an enjoyable little movie that doesn't overstay its welcome and gets a lot of mileage out of Russell's engaging presence and genuinely funny performance. It's the kind of film you'll stop on and end up watching if you come across it on TV some lazy Saturday afternoon--in other words, it's a quintessential Kurt Russell movie, and you can always use one of those.  Also, "Crunch Calhoun" is right up there with "Snake Plissken," "R.J. MacReady," "Reno Hightower," "Jack Burton," "Gabriel Cash," and "Bull McCaffrey" on the list of Awesome Kurt Russell Character Names.  (R, 90 mins)


47 RONIN
(US - 2013)

In the coming years, the long-delayed 47 RONIN is likely to be regarded less as just a bad movie and more as a case study for meddlesome production mismanagement and apocalyptically out-to-lunch decision-making.  It's not just a case of too many cooks in the kitchen--it's also a case of everyone just assuming someone else has got the cooking covered.  Every problem that the production encountered got worse when simply throwing more money at it failed to magically solve anything.  The legendary Japanese tale of the 47 Ronin has been told before and referenced many times in Japanese cinema:  in the 18th century, 47 outcast former samurai seek to avenge the death of their master, driven to suicide after being shamed in a dispute with a rival lord who insulted him.  It's a story that's influenced everything from Japanese folklore to the classic samurai films of Akira Kurosawa or Kenji Mizoguchi, who made the original 1941 version of 47 RONIN (Kon Ichikawa directed the 1994 remake).  The 2013 47 RONIN may share a title and the setting, but it ends there.  Why?  Because the people behind the latest 47 RONIN offer what the other versions lack and they felt we've been missing all this time:  a first-time director (Carl Rinsch) working with a $175 million budget; a shape-shifting witch disguising herself as a demonic fox and casting spells on samurai warriors; and absurdly inappropriate creatures like ogres, orcs, dragons, something called "the Lovecraftian Samurai," and Keanu Reeves. It's the famous story filtered through LORD OF THE RINGS and coming out as something akin to IN THE NAME OF THE RONIN. Who thought any of this was a good idea? Reeves has done some fine work over his career, but after DANGEROUS LIAISONS and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, how does anyone willingly cast him in a serious period piece?

Universal knew they were in trouble when they announced a writedown before the film even opened.  It grossed just $38 million domestically and bombed overseas. Of course, it was Rinsch who got thrown under the bus, but things only got ridiculous when the suits didn't like the rough cut he submitted as far back as the fall of 2011. They complained that it felt like "a samurai art film" and demanded more special effects and more Reeves. Reeves plays Kai, a Japanese/British half-breed adopted by the benevolent samurai leader Lord Asano (Min Tanaka). Kai is a character invented for the film, and it constantly struggles to find a use for him.  The real star is veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada as Oishi, the leader of the late Lord Asano's disgraced ronin, who's plotting vengeance against Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano), who's under the control of the aforementioned shapeshifting witch (Rinko Kikuchi). Kikuchi was added to the film after Rinsch's original cut was rejected and DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini was brought on to reconstruct Chris Morgan's script.  Amini added the supernatural elements as well as more scenes for Reeves, whose Kai was so secondary to the crux of the plot that he initially wasn't even involved in the climax of the film.  Production was delayed since they had to wait until Reeves was finished with MAN OF TAI CHI so he could return to shoot the new scenes, causing the fall 2012 release date to get bumped to over a year later, when the film finally opened on Christmas Day 2013. It already felt like Reeves was in another movie altogether, but it's never more glaring than in the climax, where Oishi and Kira fight it out while Kai battles the witch, who has shape-shifted into a snake-like, fire-breathing dragon.  Not since hastily-shot footage of Eddie Murphy goofing off in a tank was shoehorned into the two-years-on-the-shelf Dudley Moore comedy BEST DEFENSE in 1984 has post-production stitching looked so cumbersome and desperate. How does a beloved, culture-defining story of the samurai code of honor end up with Keanu Reeves discovering his CROUCHING TIGER-meets-THE MATRIX flying powers while battlling a dragon?

Actual shot from 47 RONIN

You want to know the extent of the cluelessness of everyone involved?  It wasn't discovered until shooting began that many of the Japanese actors weren't fluent in English and had to speak their dialogue phonetically (some of them are quite clearly dubbed or they at least looped it in post).  Who was in charge here?  Sure, some of this probably lies on Rinsch, but this stopped being his vision once the rough cut was shot down.  From that point on, he was simply an employee on his way to becoming a convenient scapegoat.  The majority of the blame should rest with the producers and studio execs who insisted on abandoning the source story with the lethal combo of Reeves and CGI monsters and let the budget bloat without ever really settling on or communicating to Rinsch exactly what it was they wanted.  Sanada and Asano give it their best effort and try to bring some sense of dignity to the grease fire spreading around them, and the film would work a lot better if it stayed focused on them instead of Reeves and orcs and dragons.  The visual effects are subpar for such an obscene budget and where's the sense of spirit that vital to any samurai film? These things are supposed to be rousing and alive! Where's the camaraderie among the ronin? There's 47 of them but we meet something like five, tops. This whole catastrophe might've been more palatable with the right kind of tongue-in-cheek attitude, but 47 RONIN is dour, dull, and takes itself far too seriously for a film that has little use and even less respect for its source story.  Its only accomplishment is in the way it effectively demonstrates everything wrong with Hollywood in just under two hours.  (PG-13, 119 mins)