13 Assassins - 2010 - Takashi Miike

A loose remake of a 1963 film of the same title, Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins opens in the mid-1840s. Set during the decline of the Way of the Samurai - as the age of peace had just begun in Japan, as it was now no longer a feudal country. The sadistic young Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki) the son of the former Shogun and the brother of the current Shogun, rapes and murders whoever he chooses, knowing that his political position and his family connections will cause his atrocities to go unchallenged. Kôji Yakusho stars as Shinzaemon, a war-hardened, semi-retired Samurai, who is hired covertly by a government official to put a stop to Lord Naritsugu before he climbs ever further up the political ladder. Shinzaemon recruits twelve other men and formulates a plan to trap Lord Naritsugu and his men in a small village, giving Shinzaemon and his ragtag bunch of assassins a fighting chance against Lord Naritsugu's army.

Although Takashi Miike is best known for his horror movies, specifically Audition and Ichi the Killer, he is actually somewhat of a genre specialist. Dabbling in anything from Westerns (Sukiyaki Western Django), comedies (Zebraman) and even romantic-dramas (Last Life in the Universe). 13 Assassins is not even the first samurai movie Miike has made; Izo (2003) would be Miike's first foray into Samurai cinema. As well as being very diverse, he is also extremely prolific, directing two or three films a year, only a small fraction of which are released in the West. This turns out to be somewhat of a double-edged sword for Miike as his films are always original, strange and filled with ideas, but they can also fall apart on closer scrutiny. When they do come together however, they can be some of the most entertaining pieces of work to come out that year.

Luckily, Miike pulls out the stops and delivers some of his best work as a director in years; never moving far from the template laid down by Akira Kurosawa, but never allowing his admiration to stray into derivativeness. Miike directs with an old fashioned style, doing as much 'in camera' action as possible, rarely overlying on the use of computer generated effects. While Miike's debt to Kurosawa is clear (especially 1954's Seven Samurai) comparisons can be made to American Westerns, especially Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Just as it is clear that Samurai cinema of the 40s and 50s was an influence on Westerns, eventually Westerns began influencing Samurai films, as they were both very prominent in their respective countries at the time. Here, Miike borrows a little from both Western and Eastern filmmaking, with the ragtag group of assassins being comparable to the titular seven Samurai in Seven Samurai and the film's focus on the end of the Samurai era being comparable to the end of the cowboy era in Pekinpah's The Wild Bunch.

Structurally this is a film of two halves, with the first half being more leisurely paced, giving plenty of time to set up its historical context and giving plenty of screen time to Lord Naritsugu's barbaric acts and Shinzaemon recruiting his twelve assassins. This is very wise, as action cinema can only give gravitas to its action scenes if we believe that the villain is so vile that the only reasonable response is violence, or that the heroes are charismatic enough that they are worth watching until the bitter end. In regard to the heroes, Shinzaemon treats his Samurai codes seriously and acts honourably, but he is not averse to joking or having fun. Kôji Yakusho, one of Japan's finest character actors, who has enjoyed a career lasting over thirty years, plays Shinzaemon with a world-weary realisation that he is one of the last of his kind. Unfortunately, the other twelve assassins are not nearly as interesting, as they only get a few moments of screen time between them, and they are strictly types rather than characters. Gorô Inagaki as Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu is fantastic, and perhaps the finest screen villain of 2010. His actions transcend mere cliched action cinema tyranny and they ascend into barbaric madness. Whenever he is on screen you wish for his death to come as quickly and as brutally as possible. Thankfully, the second half of the film is ready to deliver on this wish, as the entire last hour of the film is the thirteen assassins' fight with Lord Naritsugu and his army. Miike does not rely on modern action movie filmmaking techniques like quick cutting camera work and edits, instead favouring a slower, old fashioned style of filmmaking. He lets the action play out in front his camera, moving at the same pace the men are fighting; meaning we never lose focus on the thirteen men.

Cinematographer Nobuyasu Kita and production designer Yuji Hayashida give the film a wonderfully naturalistic look, choosing to use lanterns and candles to light the film, rather than use artificial, electric lighting rigs. This could possibly be a reference to Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which was shot in a similarly naturalistic style. Nobuyasu Kita and Yuji Hayashida deservedly won best cinematography and best art direction at the Awards of the Japanese Academy, as their work truly stands out amongst the bloodshed. However, the film is far from perfect, and it eventually outstays its welcome. As finely choreographed as the final hour of the film is, there is only so long you can watch limbs being hacked off without fatigue creeping in, and the aforementioned wafer thin characterisation of the twelve assassins can be a little problematic. 

All in all, this is Takashi Miike's finest film in several years, and works well as an introduction to Miike's work for those who find his vast filmography daunting. It also works well as an introduction to Samurai cinema for those who do not know where to begin. It also feels more like a tribute to the work of Akira Kurosawa rather than its own film. However, for Miike to make a tribute to a filmmaker he clearly admires is not an undignified thing to do. After all, Quentin Tarintino and Robert Rodriguez spent their entire careers as filmmakers making films which were tributes to filmmakers they were fans of, so why should Takashi Miike not do the same? 

7/10