The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

A multi-colored downer fantasy which combines bursts of imagination with a bleak worldview, resulting in something that rarely feels mainstream.

Empire by Kim Newman

Perhaps a folly and – Kikuchi aside - too deadpan to be a romp, this is still a decent, colourful samurai spectacle with a classical look (lots of symmetrical compositions) and a story which stands up under multiple retellings.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

This one never quite decides if it wants to be a big, boisterous epic or a solemn retelling, and it nearly disappears into the crack between the two.

Philadelphia Inquirer by David Hiltbrand

An odd mix of stiff and sumptuous.

New York Post by Sara Stewart

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.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

While the visuals are lovely to behold, this unremarkable version of the classic 18th century Japanese legend is stiff and uninvolving.

The Guardian by Mike McCahill

Hollywood's latest play for the growing Asian market revisits the ancient Japanese legend of self-sacrifice, hoping to offset its garbled narrative and grinding humourlessness with 3D and Keanu Reeves as a samurai Jesus.

The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold

47 Ronin can’t entirely paper over the void at its center, traceable partly to the shadowboxing of computer-aided filmmaking or studio tinkering.

Variety by Peter Debruge

As impressive as these visual elements prove to be, the film struggles to grab and maintain audiences’ interest, whether or not they know the underlying legend by heart.

Washington Post by Mark Jenkins

Ultimately, the movie just doesn’t justify its outrageous bid to turn a solemn tale of self-sacrifice into swaggering global-marketplace entertainment.