13 Assassins

Another year, another film, another new style of film-making from Miike Takashi. This time, the samurai epic.

So, obviously this film is very similar to that of Kurasawa Akira’s ‘Seven Samurai’. A samurai is tasked with a mission, and so has to hastily pulled together a crack team of samurai, of different characters, culminating with a epic battle in a small Japanese village. All pretty solid, standard stuff.

This time round it’s the pervy weirdo Lord Naritsugu that is the bad guy; ordered to be assassinated by his Shogun half-brother. This leads samurai Shinzaemon to seek out a team to carry out the Shogun’s decree, plotting the head him off at a small village. And so goes the first hour of the two hour film.

After preparing for battle, the second hour is then an all-out sword-fest, with the kind of fight scenes that took months of choreographed planning rather than split-second decisions in the face of death. And impressive it is, often exhilarating as the 13 heroes take on over 200 hundred useless henchmen who politely wait to be killed one-by-one.

The first half is not your typical Miike fodder, filmed as any mainstream epic would typically be, but the second half has more of a bloody and violent feel that you would more expect. Serious moments can appear a little comical in places – perhaps one of Miike’s flaws, hindering from  being as revered as his peers – and there is little real character development here among the 13 titular roles. Unlike ‘Seven Samurai’ where the team is considered and thoughtfully put together, here samurai appear here and there, and little is known of them bar their name, with Miike preferring the audience to enjoy their bloody demise rather than create any empathy for them.

But like many of his films before, while all are different is style and content, they all have that little element that makes them typically Miike; mixing both comedy-violence and a sense of disbelief at what you have just seen. While neither his best, nor the best samurai epic ever filmed, it is a joy to see that Miike can make a more serious, accessible film after many years and an extended filmography of gore.