Blade of the 47 Ronin
                  
Director: Ron Yuan
Year: 2022
Rating: 6.5
I can't even pretend to claim that this was a good film, but it was my kind of fanboy film. A B action film with buckets of blood and beautiful female killing machines. You know this is B immediately because it is set in Bucharest where it seems B action films go to die these days. And also because Mark Decascos is in the cast. Not that he isn't great but somewhere along the line in his career he was designated as a B action star and he never could get away from the label. What can I say in my defense, this is right up my alley - but apparently few others as the reviews are littered by ratings of 1 and 2's - it is a cool cool world where people can walk around with swords in feudal Japanese outfits and leave dead bodies by the dozens in hotel lobbies, subways and discos and no one seems to really care. It is as if they are living in parallel worlds - a bit like John Wick without the rules. Those samurais and ninjas sure do make a mess. Hard cleaning up all that CGI blood. A ludicrous plot that a ten year old would roll his eyes at. Thankfully, I am not ten.



There are magicians and there are samurai and there are ninjas and they exist in this shadow world where they have been fighting each other for hundreds of years. One of the samurai clans are descendants of the 47 Ronin and the main Magician Yurei (Dan Southworth) has been killing them all off with his ninjas and his evil magic. He is doing this because there is a prophesy that an ancestor of the 47 Ronin will combine two swords and kill him.  He thinks he has killed the last one and then oh shit - realizes there is another one but nobody knows who it is. I think we have come across similar plots many times but it never grows old. Or does it.



All the samurai clans have gathered in Bucharest apparently because no one cares if you take a sword into a disco and start killing people. It is an Open Sword Carry city. Among the clan leaders are Shinshiro (Desascos) and Nikko (Vietnamese action star Dustin Nguyen). Shinshiro arrives with a retinue of three lovely Asian women - all deadly and fashionably dressed and lipsticked up. You are the man. All the other clans are just drab men. They need a plan to stop Yurei from getting the two swords and gaining ultimate power. And they think that the last descendant of the 47 Ronin is possibly this annoying American Asian woman who has just arrived in the country to sell one of the swords.



She (Anna Akana) thinks they are all nuts when they tell her it is her destiny to kill Yurei. Lots of sword action - it is not Kurosawa but it is reasonably entertaining. Ninjas will start getting a bad name if they continue to get killed so easily. The Ninja Union should lodge a complaint. A bunch of set pieces with the three girls (Teresa Ting, Chikako Fukuyama and Luna Fujimoto) slicing and dicing and looking good doing it. And killing with style is what it is all about.