Because that sort of pairing is just how I roll. Okay, in truth I went to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Hannah and Arya a week or so back, and 47 Ronin with my friend Jon yesterday, but I would rock that double bill if the opportunity presented itself.
Ben Stiller's incarnation of James Thurber's protagonist is, like Danny Kaye's earlier interpretation, at first an ineffectual daydreamer, but later engages in real adventures which sublimate his need to fantasise. Intelligent, skilled, but unappreciated by his new bosses, Mitty finds himself tasked with locating a missing photo negative which photo-journalist Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn) has recommended for the cover of the final print issue of Life magazine. At first an apparently simple task, Mitty's attraction to his co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) prompts him to adopt the search as a quest, which in turn pushes him to abandon his humdrum existence and to live the kind of adventures he has been dreaming of.
The film is a triumph of the underdog travelogue for the middle-aged and underappreciated. In refusing to separate fantasy and reality by on-screen cues, the film almost threatens us with an unrealised reveal that none of the positive parts of Mitty's life are real, but this only makes the eventual validation of his adventures and his final, soft-spoken takedown of the evil asset stripper who has tormented him throughout more heart-warming.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is never laugh-out-loud funny, but has a gentle humour which won me over completely, despite initial reservations. While he can be abrasive as an actor, Ben Stiller plays Mitty with a genuine likability he has increasingly displayed of late, and the supporting cast are all solid. Wiig is an especially good fit as Mitty's love interest, both bringing a similar gentle strength to Mitty's own, and flying the flag as an attractive older woman in a main romantic role.
Speaking of stand out female roles, do we all remember Mako Mori in Pacific Rim? Hold onto that, because I'd rather think of Rinko Kikuchi in that role than in 47 Ronin, and you probably will as well.
The film tells the story of the 47 Ronin, the samurai of Lord Asano who avenged his death in defiance of the Shogun's command after Asano was forced to commit seppuku for striking another daimyo. In the original tale, this happens because Asano is young and rash and Lord Kira is a dick; in the film Asano is old, revered, and bewitched.
The leader of the ronin is Oishi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who has an honourary MBE for his King Lear with the RSC, by the way); that's him in silhouette at the bottom of the poster. Given Lord Kira's alliance with a heterochromial witch, he recruits Asano's adopted weirdo half-breed might-be-some-sort-of-demon, Kai (Keanu Reeves), who can see through witchcraft and is all sorts of badass.
Joining Kai and the witch on the poster are skull tattooed English bloke, who has one line, and big metal samurai dude (giant Englishman Neil Fingleton is, for some reason, credited as 'Lovecraftian samurai'), who has none.
What follows is pretty much the story of the 47 Ronin, just with added monsters, witches and Keanu Reeves.
Rinko Kikuchi plays the witch, in a role where everything about the character - her hair, her clothes, her expression, her voice - basically screams sex. You know how in Pacific Rim Kikuchi wore a sculpted body suit and still looked serious? In this film, even when she shapeshifts into a fox, it's clear that this is a fox who is no better than she ought to be. It's not subtle, and placed against the other female characters - Oishi's wife, a stoic and dutiful samurai bride; and Asano's daughter, Kai's love interest, who is painfully virtuous and lovelorn - it is clearly intended to make her seem bad, which is kind of disappointingly conservative.
The fight scenes are well done, and when it's not being all weird the film has a good handle on the story it's telling. It's a shame it seems to feel the need to spend so much time dwelling on Kai's past, his magical powers, and his doomed romance with Lady Asano, and the funky-flowing-cloth and snake-haired witch, instead of getting to the meat.
Also, Tadanobu Asano is so clearly channeling Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's smug-snake performance as Shang Tsung that when Tagawa's name came up in the credits I almost wondered if he as aging backwards or something.
The film is a triumph of the underdog travelogue for the middle-aged and underappreciated. In refusing to separate fantasy and reality by on-screen cues, the film almost threatens us with an unrealised reveal that none of the positive parts of Mitty's life are real, but this only makes the eventual validation of his adventures and his final, soft-spoken takedown of the evil asset stripper who has tormented him throughout more heart-warming.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is never laugh-out-loud funny, but has a gentle humour which won me over completely, despite initial reservations. While he can be abrasive as an actor, Ben Stiller plays Mitty with a genuine likability he has increasingly displayed of late, and the supporting cast are all solid. Wiig is an especially good fit as Mitty's love interest, both bringing a similar gentle strength to Mitty's own, and flying the flag as an attractive older woman in a main romantic role.
Speaking of stand out female roles, do we all remember Mako Mori in Pacific Rim? Hold onto that, because I'd rather think of Rinko Kikuchi in that role than in 47 Ronin, and you probably will as well.
The leader of the ronin is Oishi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who has an honourary MBE for his King Lear with the RSC, by the way); that's him in silhouette at the bottom of the poster. Given Lord Kira's alliance with a heterochromial witch, he recruits Asano's adopted weirdo half-breed might-be-some-sort-of-demon, Kai (Keanu Reeves), who can see through witchcraft and is all sorts of badass.
Joining Kai and the witch on the poster are skull tattooed English bloke, who has one line, and big metal samurai dude (giant Englishman Neil Fingleton is, for some reason, credited as 'Lovecraftian samurai'), who has none.
What follows is pretty much the story of the 47 Ronin, just with added monsters, witches and Keanu Reeves.
Rinko Kikuchi plays the witch, in a role where everything about the character - her hair, her clothes, her expression, her voice - basically screams sex. You know how in Pacific Rim Kikuchi wore a sculpted body suit and still looked serious? In this film, even when she shapeshifts into a fox, it's clear that this is a fox who is no better than she ought to be. It's not subtle, and placed against the other female characters - Oishi's wife, a stoic and dutiful samurai bride; and Asano's daughter, Kai's love interest, who is painfully virtuous and lovelorn - it is clearly intended to make her seem bad, which is kind of disappointingly conservative.
The fight scenes are well done, and when it's not being all weird the film has a good handle on the story it's telling. It's a shame it seems to feel the need to spend so much time dwelling on Kai's past, his magical powers, and his doomed romance with Lady Asano, and the funky-flowing-cloth and snake-haired witch, instead of getting to the meat.
Also, Tadanobu Asano is so clearly channeling Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's smug-snake performance as Shang Tsung that when Tagawa's name came up in the credits I almost wondered if he as aging backwards or something.
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