13 Assassins

These guys? You don't want to fuck with these guys.

Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins is what 300 should have been. It's a violent, historical action movie about the few facing impossible odds, but still has personal drama and character arcs to it. It uses shocking imagery and gore to great effect, instead of just splattering it around to appear edgy. It's made by people from the country it takes place in, so it doesn't neuter the setting to make it more relatable to modern (Yank) audiences.

And I was expecting this movie to be really bad, because I'm still bitter about Ninja Assassin sucking balls. There aren't even any ninja in this movie.

13 Assassins is set in 1844, during Japan's Shogunate period, and the last days of the samurai. Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu is a shogun's younger brother, and will soon ascend to being shogun himself, which doesn't sit well with his subjects-to-be. This is mostly because he's an almost comically heinous monster who uses his high position as an excuse to rape, murder and torture people left and right. The shogun's advisors decide that something must be done, and hire Shimada Shinzaemon, a veteran samurai, to assassinate him. Shinzeamon recruits a ragtag group of warriors to achieve the task, knowing full well that even if they succeed at their task, they will have to give up their former lives for good after having assassinated the shogun's brother.

Now, as much as I like to laud any movie for not treating its viewers like idiots, I have to admit that there is such a thing as expecting too much of them. The early parts of the movie are filled with exposition about the current situation, and you're expected to remember a lot of names and faces to keep up with who's doing what and what their relations to the others in the room are. After about a third of the movie has gone, the planning stage starts, and the pacing gets better. I don't want to spoil anything about the action climax, but let me just say... they're going to have to rename that rule "The Inverse Samurai Law", now.

Aside from the pacing issues and some really shoddy editing, the movie succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be: a shocking, grim action drama where a lot of people get cut up with katana, and the essence of bushido is inspected and questioned.

I saw this movie at the Helsinki International Film Festival, a Finnish event where non-mainstream movies are shown in big cinemas. It premiered in Japan about a year ago, so I don't know if it's running in the cinema near you. If it is, I highly recommend it.

I wish Takashi Miike the best of luck with his next project: The Phoenix Wright film adaptation. (I'm not making this up.)