13 Assassins

It’s not often a Japanese film gets a mainstream release in the UK so I wasn’t going to miss out on this. Miss out on the first 5 minutes or so I did, though, courtesy of the traffic and the first long queue I’ve ever seen at Cineworld Edinburgh. Typical.

13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku)

“I shall accomplish your task… with magnificence.”

See it if you like: Bickering Japanese, huge set pieces and period drama. With blood. And beheadings.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A small band of samurai, ronin and a woodsman take on a mental emperor regent in early 19th century Japan.

Director Takashi Miike is most famed for extreme gorefests such as Audition and Ichi the Killer. 13 Assassins is more akin to a smaller-scale Red Cliff (yes, I know that wasn’t Japanese) and while still a little grisly in places is generally fairly tame.

The plot hinges around an evil lord – half-brother to the emperor – who is causing a little friction amongst the locals. Burning their land, chopping off their limbs, raping their wives. That kind of thing. He’s a complete sociopath and eventually enough is enough. One aggrieved noble too far and a plot is hatched to dispatch with him as he is travelling.

The 13 assassins of the title are a mixed bunch, though all with a common goal – to die an honourable and purposeful death. The drama leading up to the actual blistering final encounter is a little slow-paced and typically Japanese in its grandeur and social structure. The dialogue fits well – at least as far as the translation goes – and doesn’t reach “cheesy”.

However, the kicker is the final battle “scene”. I use the word loosely as it essentially takes up the second half of the film – pretty much an entire hour. During this period, no music is played in the background – the only sounds are screams, explosions, shouted dialogue, clashing swords… you get the idea. It flows very well and is a joy to watch (if you find brutal death joyous).

It’s probably not one to take people to see if you’re trying to convert a general cineplex-goer to world cinema. However, that last battle sequence rivals anything that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Bay and the like can produce with huge budgets and a billion CPUs churning out the CGI.

Related articles

• 13 Assassins (mxyzplk.wordpress.com)
• 13 Assassins, review (telegraph.co.uk)
• “13 Assassins”: A new samurai action classic (salon.com)
• 13 Assassins (15) (independent.co.uk)