A group of samurai assemble in 13 Assassins.
2.5 Stars
13 Assassins is a skillful, old-fashioned samurai epic that fails on one key front: Its conclusion doesn't live up to what the first two-thirds promise. Such lengthy and complex character development needs something rousing to make it feel worthwhile—like The Wages of Fear. In Takashi Miike's film, we're led to expect a marvelous battle sequence. What we get instead is a horribly violet bloodbath. I know, I'm probably being overly-squeamish, but the killing goes on so long that it started to become monotonous. Technically, it's all great, but on a human level, I was seriously turned off by this film.
The film takes place in feudal Japan and focuses on the efforts of a group of samurai to kill the digustingly brutal, evil Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki). Leading the charge is Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho), a older and wiser man who realizes how dangerous a Naritsugu regime could be to all of Japan. With the permission of one of the Shogun's top advisors, he assembles a team of men who are ready and willing to give up their life for this cause, but they also aren't afraid to go down without a fight. When they are ready, the 13 ride out for a battle that will determine the fate of their nation, a battle they very likely won't return home from.
There's no denying Miike's impressive way of staging his action scenes, but there's only so many ways you can gruesomely kill someone, and after the first head was lopped off, the first guts spilled, I started to lose interest. Yes, these scenes are more complicated than what I'm describing, but the points, I think, are valid. If you have a hard time with brutal violence, like I sometimes do (see also: Drive), no amount of directorial prowess can make you fall in love with 13 Assassins.
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