13 Assassins

In the grand tradition of Akira Kurosawa, Takasha Miike directed 13 Assassins, a 2010 film about the samurai told in the style of Hollywood films, most specifically the Western and the "mission" type of war film. There's also more than a little of the Ocean films of Steven Soderbergh in it. It's a rousing and bloody entertainment.

Set in 1844, an advisor to the Shogun is worried about the ruler's sadistic and impetuous half-brother, who rapes and kills with impunity. He secretly hires a samurai of renown, Shinzaemon, to form a team to assassinate the villainous Lord. Shinzaemon is easy to convince, especially after he sees a woman that the Lord mutilated, cutting off her limbs and tongue and massacring her family.

Shinzaemon assembles an army of 12, including his nephew, who had been a samurai but is now living a life of debauchment. They plan to ambush the Lord, who is guarded by his own samurai, Hanbei, who was Shinzaemon's chief rival in the dojo. Hanbei knows his master is a brutal psychotic, but the samurai is sworn to obey his master.

The assassins, traveling through the forest, pick up a 13th with a man of the wilderness. His identity is enigmatic, and there are many clues to suggest he is not fully human.

Eventually the 13 pinpoint a town where they will attack the Lord. They rig it with explosive booby-traps and movable fences. They will have to defeat an army of 200 to get to their target, and, as with many of these films, it stretches credulity. Of course the samurai are superior fighters, but the army they cut through has to be pretty incompetent to not defeat them. The samurai move through the crowd, hacking away, while the faceless extras all cower before them, vanquished one by one like Republican presidential candidates. If they only attacked together, the fight would be over in five minutes.

But instead the fight goes on for close to an hour, with almost all of the assassins getting a death scene, sometimes with marvelously cliched last words, like "Our mission...finish it!" In the best tradition of the Western showdown, it is left with Shinzaemon and Henbei left to duel to the death, with the evil Lord looking on, fascinated.

I enjoyed this film very much, but it lacks some of the sweep of the best Kurosawa. I found it difficult to differentiate between many of the assassins, who except for a few aren't given much characterization. The ending, starting with that last showdown, is very good, though, with two characters left looking over a vast pile of dead bodies and a smoldering town. Miike, an incredibly prolific director, has a fine eye for visuals and the film is also very well edited.

The DVD contains a interview from Japanese television with Miike. The young female interviewer asks some inane questions, like "What are the highlights of your film?" that Miike answers graciously. She then tells him she had to look away at some of the violence, such as an early scene of harikiri, because the sound effects were so realistic. "Oh, you know what harikiri sounds like?" he teases her.