Being native Japanese, I can be a little nit-picky about movies that are era-centric especially when it comes to feudal Japan. This movie did not insult my intelligence, was true to form with depicting the nature of Japan pre-Meiji era and gave me goosebumps with its intensity. This movie is both entertaining, intelligent and brings to life a culture (Samurai) that few today may be aware of. This is a true Samurai movie in form and delivery without being over the top. Thank you Amazon for making it available online. This is a definite must add to my movie collection.
The build up to the final battle scene is a little slow and the gruesome scenes which setup the evil nature of the protaganist's target might be a little bit overly done (the target practice on the remaining Mamiya family in particular). I would have actually liked to see more character development with the original samurai and the couple of ronin but then the movie would have been over 3 hours long.
Visually a few CG elements look less than stellar (flaming cattle and horses falling from an exploding bridge), I am guessing this is probably more to do with the CG production than anything else.
Despite a few qualms I wouldn't take a star off because the final, extremely long battle scene is just incredibly awesome. I haven't seen the original B&W version from 1963 but I might have to try to find it, if its half as good.
Even now with the movie sitting on my DVR I am looking forward to picking up Takashi Miike's masterpiece on bluray as soon as it comes out.Like many others, I'd read nothing but great reviews about 13 Assassins. Heck, a friend of mine saw a screening of it last year at the Venice Film Festival and told me to remember the name so I could check it out when it finally hit the States, and he and I have nearly identical tastes in movies. I just watched the movie about 3 hours ago, and I can't say I remember much of the movie apart from the huge battle at the end. The first third of the movie is spent gathering the assassins, the middle is preparing things for the battle, and the rest is taking out bad guys. Directed by Takashi Miike, this is one of his most mature films to date, and when I say that, I don't mean that it has tons of content for 'mature audiences' like blood, tons of gore, etc. I mean that he's toned things down quite a bit here, and made a modern samurai movie that echoes the likes of Akira Kurosawa's. But that's where one of the problems lies as well.
The plot of 13 Assassins is easy to explainthere's an immature, cruel lord, Naritsugu, on his way to a higher rank. A group of 12 samurai band together and plot his assassination. They can't just go in with a sneak attack, or even take him out when he's about to board a boat, so they plan a pretty good course of action. First they'll get the leader of one village, whose son was killed by the evil lord, to block entry through their village to that Naritsugu and his troops will have to take an alternate route. When they eventually come to another village, that's where the 12 samurai will trap and attack the lord. Things go according to plan for the most part, but the samurai end up being joined by a comical hunter named Kiga, who was found trapped in a cage high up in a tree. He was hanging around as punishment for laying his hands on "the boss' woman". Still, the samurai proceed with their plans to take out Naritsugu, but if you've seen films like Seven Samurai, you know how things usually go in cases like this.
Alright, I know people will throw a fit over an average rating like mine, but I'll get the pros out of the way first, because there were a few things I really did like about 13 Assassins. It has gorgeous cinematographysimple locations like a creek in the woods looked stunning, eventhough I see things like that all the time here in Oregon. The locations they used for this film were perfect. I also really dug the soundtrack and will probably end up getting a couple of the tracks, if not the whole album. All the performances by the actors were spot-on, with no one being over the top or coming off as a B-list actor. The actors who portrayed samurai Shinzaemon and Heizo stood out the most, as did Shinzaemon's friend/rival Hanbei. Finally, while the final battle did go on a little longer than I would've liked, the action sequences were well-choreographed, and I loved that none of the samurai had any kind of special abilities of skills over the others like many other movies of this kind would. Too many samurai movies end up turning into film equivalents of Dynasty Warriors or some other game. The fights are very real, and while I don't have a problem with graphic violence, things are done very tastefully here.
Wait, that makes everything sound great, right? Well, I had a lot of small problems that added up over the course of the movie. The first one being that I didn't care about any of the samurai and who lived or died. The leader Shinzaemon was a good leader and all, but because of how quickly they get to the village to prepare for battle and other scenes prior to this, there wasn't much time spent developing or showing any of the samurai's personalities. Sure, there's a comical scene here and there, like one with two samurai learning the art of explosives, but aside from that, can anyone who's seen this movie honestly tell me they were sad when something would happen to one of them? There's ONE scene that sticks out that gave a little humanity to one character, and that's when we find out that he's never killed anyone beforethey've only practiced with real swords. His reaction seems genuine, and again, not overdone. But even the would-be comic relief character of Kiga doesn't get much time because screen time is cut almost evenly amongst the samurai, and that hurts. There's not even really a super cool samurai here to root for, like how Seven Samurai had Kikuchiyo and Kyuzo. There are two or three that are a little more skilled than the others, but it's not that much of a difference. And like many of Miike's other movies, the CG here is pretty bad. A scene involving flaming cattle could've been much, much better if the animations weren't so poor. Think back to the climax of Zebraman and that's about the quality to expect with these...only this is a movie that's supposed to be taken seriously. There were a few tiny problems but my last big one has to do with the translation on the English subtitles. I haven't been fluent in Japanese for over 8 years now, but even I could tell when a few lines weren't translated properly, or when something was toned down. Is it too much to ask for accurate subtitles?
First things first regarding the blu-ray: yes, the run time of the movie is shorter than the Japanese version, but all the deleted scenes are included in the special features, and Miike felt that these scenes slowed the movie down. And you know what? He's right. There were only two scenes in here that were worth keeping (one only for comedic value, which would've SEVERELY helped Kiga's character). The other special features are a trailer and a nice 20 minute interview with Miike. And the picture and audio quality of the blu-ray? Nearly flawless. Crank this sucker up and watch this on your biggest tv. It looks and sounds that good.
I can't say that I'll be recommending 13 Assassins to anyone, but it's definitely not a bad movie. 'definitely one of Miike's better movies, and a step in the right direction for the guy since the quality of nearly everything is better than his usual work. I just wish I cared about the characters a little more. It's always great to have a big battle where characters aren't made out to be gods, and to see them getting tired, especially when it's 200 against 13, but had that huge fight been trimmed down by even 10 minutes and more time was given to flesh out even a handful of the samurai, I would've easily given this another star.
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This gets off to an acceptable start. A sadistic warlord stands way too close to the throne bad enough what he does to the commoners around him, it would be vastly worse if the whole nation were his plaything. A band of 12 assassins is enlisted, and they're off. We establish personal loyalties and conflicts early on, compressed into traditional forms by the rigid code of bushido. Although well executed, this seemed ordinary up to about the half-way point, when an improbable thirteenth joins the band.The group picks a small town for their ambush. They buy out the village and turn it into their trap. The villagers bait the trap with themselves, lure the warlord and his retainers in, then escape to safety as the trap springs. The rest of the movie, a solid 45 minutes, presents one of the most incredible fight scenes in cinematic history. I mean, the fighting is believable no flying swordsmen or outlandish weaponry but I've never seen a movie sustain an adrenaline rush for so long. And, despite the fast-moving action, it never turns repetitive. The 13th, although the comedic element, brings his own contribution to the mayhem as well.
The ending comes in suitably heroic (and Japanese) style, with a brief reminder of just why the world would be better off without that warlord. Then, in a final moment, we suddenly wonder just who or what that 13th might be.
A world with Kurosawa in it has very high standards to meet. Maybe "13 Assassins" doesn't meet the very highest, but its a good one anyway, and worth coming back to.
-wiredweird
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The strength of the story alone will carry along most viewers. But to fully appreciate the tale that 'Assassins' is crafting, you have to understand the Samurai their machinations for power, political infrastructure and shared heritage.In this period, prior to the West's forced entry into Japan via Commodore Perry, the samurai culture had just past its zenith. Peace had ruled the land for so long that the warrior class were mostly that in name alone few had tasted real combat. Fewer still wanted it. Luxury and prestige were often chosen above stark training and an ascetic life. And the ultimate glory, to die in battle, was considered poetic by many who carried the 'daisho' (two swords), not a literal truth as in the past.
Additionally, absolute loyalty without question was honored above all else. The entire structure of governance was based on this concept, and without it, chaos would ensue.
So when an unspeakably horrific monster, born into the family of the Shogunate (the warrior ruling class), was about to be promoted as the Shogun's primary advisor it was inconceivable that the retainers would do anything to rid themselves of this human cancer; not without bringing terrible shame and dishonor to themselves and their families. And, by default, destabilizing the very structure of their existence and potentially plunging the country back into civil war.
The question is, and the crux of this film, what do you do?
Borrowing heavily from the true story of 'The Forty-Seven Ronin' very special men, old school samurai if you will, would take on the task of killing this living demon in human form.
Viewers have to understand that assassination of a superior was considered the penultimate evil in samurai culture. It would be akin to combining the modern crimes of betraying your country, raping your sister, and cannibalizing a small child all wrapped up into one wholly unforgivable sin. So to choose the path of assassination... well, you can only imagine the unbelievable burden being placed on their shoulders.
If you can assimilate the contradiction of finding honor in committing the dishonorable then this film will be infinitely more powerful and enjoyable.
That said, I found the film a bit formulaic. While likely 'new' to many in the west, these dramas have been a cultural mainstay for the Japanese since the first katana raised in front of movie cameras. Annual Taiga productions are clearly the standard by which to measure the story, with Kurosawa as the foundation onto which all like stories are visually expressed.
Overall enjoyable, but not superior. I would encourage viewers to invest time and funds in other productions. See Wikipedia under 'Taiga Drama".
[Edited 6.12.11] Learned something new about this production that I feel truly adds to the wonderful characterizations in this film. During the battle, the comical character whom the Twelve meet in the mountains is mortally wounded, a wakizashi thrown by the "demon" stabbing him in the throat. Yet, after the battle, he later appears unhurt; commenting how sad he was that the fun was over and happily trotting off back to the mountain.
I had ascribed the scene as some kind of medically-explained freak event. However, an Amazon Discussion reveals a much deeper insight into the film and Japanese culture itself.
In fact, what we're witnessing is the physical embodiment of a 'Tengu' a type of spirit or demon. It appears there are two types, falling into the basic categories of 'good' and 'evil'. Obviously the imp is a good version of this creature. And even more specifically, he appears to have taken the form of a 'Yamabushi' an ascetic mountain warrior.
Wikipedia cites a tale which must have been the inspiration for this character: "According to a legend in the 18th-century Kaidan Toshiotoko, a tengu took the form of a yamabushi and faithfully served the abbot of a Zen monastery until the man guessed his attendant's true form."
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