Not Rated (International Version Rated R
for Sequences of Bloody Violence, some Disturbing Images and Brief Nudity)
Running Time: 2 Hours & 21 Minutes
Cast:
Kôji Yakusho-Shinzaemon Shimada
Hiroki Matsukata-Saheita Kuranaga
Takayuki Yamada-Shinrokurō Shimada
Kazuki Namioka-Rihei Ishiduka
Tsuyoshi Ihara-Kujūrō Hirayama
Ikki Sawamura-Gunjirō Mitsuhashi
Seiji Rokkaku-Mosuke Ōtake
Sōsuke Takaoka-Yasokichi Hioki
Yūma Ishigaki-Gennai Higuchi
Kōen Kondō-Yahachi Horii
Arata Furuta-Heizō Sahara
Masataka Kubota-Shōujirō Ogura
Yūsuke Iseya-Koyata Kiga
Gorô Inagaki-Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira
Masachika Ichimura-Hanbei Kitou
Mikijiro Hira-Sir Doi
Kazue Fukiishi-Tsuya/Upashi
Koshiro Matsumoto-Yukie Makino
Mitsuki Tanimura-Chise Makino
Takumi Saito-Uneme Makino
Masaaki Uchino-Zusho Mamiya
Directed by Takashi Miike
Note:
In Japanese with English subtitles.
 |
| You don't mess with these samurai. |
Japanese director Takashi Miike has quite
an extensive filmography and has helmed over seventy theatrical features,
television shows, and direct-to-video offerings, all encompassing a wide
variety of genres ranging from family-friendly to ultraviolent fare. ’ My
experience with Miike’s work is limited but I am familiar with some of his more
controversial films that push the boundaries of extreme cinema such as
“Audition,” “Ichi the Killer,” and “Visitor Q,” infamous for its taboo themes
of incest, necrophilia, and 'erotic lactation.' As such, Miike is an acquired
taste but his latest flick, “13 Assassins,” a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963
black-and-white film “The Thirteen Assassins,” is more conventional and lacks
the stylistic flair you would associate with the prolific director. The samurai
film died out due to overexposure but “13 Assassins” brings the genre back to
the forefront with bloody panache. With its pitch-perfect pacing,
larger-than-life characters and a lengthy battle scene that defies all
description, Miike proves to Hollywood that all you need is creativity and the
necessary drive to create a memorable action film, not millions of dollars of
meaningless CG effects.
“13 Assassins” takes place during the twilight years of
the Edo period in Japan. On March 5, 1844, Akashi Clan House Elder Zusho Mamiya
(Masaaki Uchino) commits painful and brutal seppuku in protest of the shogun’s
younger half-brother, Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Gorô Inagaki). As no one dares
to disrespect the shogun’s authority, Naritsugu is free to commit his sadistic
acts of rape and torture without any fear of retribution. A high ranking
official, Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), realizes that Naritsugu would only bring
disaster if he becomes shogun and secretly enlists the aid of a semi-retired
samurai named Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to assassinate him. Shinzaemon
gathers eleven other samurai to accompany him on his mission, including his
nephew, Shinrokurō (Takayuki Yamada). They plan to ambush Naritsugu on his long
journey home from Edo by forcing him and his armed escort to travel through a
small village called Ochiai. Before the group departs, Shinzaemon is confronted
by his former sparring partner Hanbei Kitou (Masachika Ichimura), who now
serves Naritsugu as his personal samurai bodyguard. Each tries in vain to
dissuade the other from their task, with Hanbei promising that they will fight
soon as he leaves. Shinzaemon tasks fellow samurai Gunjirō Mitsuhashi (Ikki
Sawamura) with buying out the mayor of Ochiai so that they are free to fortify
the town with numerous hidden traps. Along the way, the samurai meet a hunter
in the mountains named Koyata Kiga (Yûsuke Iseya), who claims to be of samurai
lineage. As he is familiar with the surrounding area, Shinzaemon decides to
adopt him as the thirteenth assassin. Once the preparations at Ochiai are
complete, the samurai take up positions and wait for Naritsugu and his armed escort
to arrive but realize to their horror that they are not facing the 70 men they
expected but 200. Despite all the odds stacked heavily against them, Shinzaemon
is unfazed and is determined to complete the mission and kill Naritsugu, even
if it claims his and the lives of his fellow samurai in the process.
“13
Assassins” offers no real surprises, especially if you’ve seen similar films
such as Akira Kurosawa’s highly influential 1954 film, “Seven Samurai,” but its
story of a dying breed of warriors making their literal and symbolic last stand
is simple and effective, and sometimes that’s all you need in a good story.
Understanding the subtext requires a passing familiarity with Japanese history,
although if you’re not, it won’t hinder your enjoyment of the film. During the
Edo period (which lasted from 1603 to 1868), the peace brought about by the
rule of the shoguns of the Tokugawa family led to the samurai gradually losing
their military function, and they served as bureaucrats and administrators instead.
The paired blades of a katana and a wakizashi were more of a symbolic emblem of
the authority of a daimyo, a feudal lord. In the film, Shinzaemon meets a
former sex slave whose limbs and tongue were chopped off by Naritsugu. When
asked about what happened to her family, she grips a brush in her mouth and
with tears of blood running in her eyes, she writes ‘TOTAL MASSACRE.’ It’s an
intense and unsettling scene, certainly not for the faint of heart but it
solidifies in a matter-of-fact manner just how psychopathic Naritsugu is.
Shinzaemon sympathizes but reacts by laughing aloud because he sees this as an
opportunity to finally die gloriously in battle. His hands even tremble with
excitement. The peace of the Edo period has left the samurai restless and they
find their code of honor (Bushidō) is put to the test with a corrupt and
decadent shogunate, a fate which befalls all empires. When Shinzaemon and his
twelve samurai confront Naritsugu, they are not just doing the right thing but
also making a final stand to protect their way of life. The epilogue reveals
that the Meiji Restoration led to the shogunate system being abolished and the
increased marginalization of the samurai in favor of a more modern military to
compete with the West. As they have become a relic of the past, this battle
becomes the samurai’s last hurrah, their last chance to go out in a blaze of
glory.
The first half of “13 Assassins” has Shinzaemon receiving his mission
and gathering the various samurai to aid him. Although character development is
minimal, Miike allows for some reflection when the samurai remark on how
wasteful their lives have been. The samurai are not meant to disobey their
masters and are required to give their lives to protect them, but when the
lords they serve are people like Naritsugu, than what is the point of being a
samurai? There’s also plenty of comic relief and subtle supernatural leanings,
stemming from the character of Koyata Kiga. This is left ambiguous to the
viewer but there are hints that he is some sort of immortal spirit, not
necessarily evil but mischievous. The second half is comprised of one big
battle and it lasts an epic forty minutes. Numerous booby traps are unleashed to
separate Naritsugu’s armed escort with Shinzaemon’s samurai hacking and slashing
like no tomorrow. A small group of Naritsugu’s men come upon a courtyard with
numerous katana haphazardly stuck to the ground. A samurai leaps to face them
and after killing one man, he simply just grabs a random sword to kill another.
It is simply…awesome. Reveling in its brutal realism, there’s a fluidity to how the
scene is shot and not once did I have a hard time following what was going on.
The camera is steady with plenty of wide views whereas Hollywood is obsessed
with shaky cam and quick editing, producing incomprehensible action scenes.
Amidst all the blood being shed, we actually care about what is happening.
These people have devoted their whole lives to being samurai and damn it all to
hell if they want to die fighting in something worth believing in! Most
impressive is that Miike accomplishes all this without the aid of CG effects
that many Hollywood films slavishly depend on.
“13 Assassins” has a large cast
and while it cannot afford to give everyone equal focus, each of the samurai
serving Shinzaemon is at least given a unique enough voice to stand out from
the crowd. Kôji Yakusho is undeniably the main star of the show and he is
excellent, the calm exterior when he is fishing contrasting with the fiery
determination he displays to complete his mission. This is a man you do not
want to mess with, especially when he can decapitate you with a precise stroke with
his katana. When he stares down at Naritsugu’s army before him, he takes out
the parchment with ‘TOTAL MASSACRE’ written and screams to his men, ‘Kill! Kill
them all!’ Takayuki Yamada plays Shinzaemon’s nephew, Shinrokurō, a samurai who
has lost his way but joins his uncle in, as he describes it, a last gamble to
redeem himself before their way of life is extinguished. Masachika Ichimura is
Hanbei Kitou, a samurai so devoted to protecting his lord that he knowingly turns
a blind eye to the kind of monster Naritsugu really is. The Bushidō code he
lives by has become twisted where it is less about doing the honorable thing
and more about following orders. As Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, Gorô Inagaki
emanates a casual air of menace as an unrepentant villain. He never displays
any outward glee at the violence he inflicts and in fact, looks bored. To him,
this is routine and Naritsugu believes that it is his right to treat people
this way, feeling it serves as a reminder to the peasants who the real ‘master’
is. The film really hammers home that he is evil and it makes his demise that
much more satisfying. Finally there’s Yûsuke Iseya as Koyata Kiga, a wild
mountain man with an insatiable sexual appetite who may or may not be immortal.
Most of the film’s comedy comes from Iseya and at one point, he’s repeatedly
hit over the head with a heavy branch by two samurai but he neither falls nor
feels the pain, simply turning to the man who hit him and asking, ‘What?!’
Another has him wearing out all the prostitutes at the brothel in Ochiai and is
one of the scenes deleted from the international version.
Released on September
25, 2010 in Japan with a limited release in the U.S. on April 29, 2011, “13
Assassins” has received critical acclaim with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics
hailed the remake as an ‘action spectacle executed with killer, almost dizzying
panache.’ However, approximately fifteen minutes was cut from the original
version for its international release. I’m not entirely sure why these scenes
were deleted but I’ll venture a guess that it had something to do with the
MPAA’s hypocritical censorship requirements. The international version will be
available on Blu-Ray and DVD on July 5th but will include all the cut content
as deleted scenes. The director’s cut is currently playing for the first time
in the U.S. as part of the New York Asian Film Festival 2011 at Lincoln Center
in New York City, which is celebrating its tenth year. There’s only one
screening which was a sold out show. Takayuki Yamada made a special guest
appearance so if you missed him, you’re out of luck. The film has grossed $17
million worldwide which isn’t bad considering the production budget was only an
estimated $6 million. Miike does not deviate from the genre conventions set
forth in a samurai film but he polishes them to maximum effect with “13
Assassins,” delivering a bloody, visceral battle scene with a story told in a
concise manner without any needless exposition. “13 Assassins” is quite simply,
one heck of a bloody good time.
Final Rating: 5 out of 5
“For the Shogun, for the people, for the
many who died untimely deaths, for Uneme Makino and his wife, for his father
Yukie Makino, and for my men scattering Ochiai. For that innocent, nameless
young girl with severed arms and legs...I SHALL TAKE YOUR LIFE!”
Posts
