13 Assassins
- 141 Minutes. Rated R.
“Soon this quiet town will be a bloodbath…”
What makes a true samurai warrior? This question is at the heart of Japanese director Takashi Miike‘s epic marital art masterpiece, 13 Assassins.
The year is 1844, peace reigns. Peace is good for most people, but it brings on a samurai recession. Samurais feel underutilized and no one can blame Obama for this one. Unfortunately, one of the few people employing samurais is the sadistic Lord Naritsugu Matsudaria (Gorô Inagaki), brother of the Shogun(head honcho of Japan), who has just been invited to help with political affairs.
I guarantee that you will hate Naritsugu in five minutes. He loves war, rape, and torture, a typical Saturday night right? Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), one of the government officials, pleas with samurai Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to kill the Lord Naritsugu before he meets the Shogun. Not only is this against Samurai code, but it’s not going to be easy. Lord Naritsugu is defended by Shinzaemon’s school friend, Hanbei Kitou (Masachika Ichimura) along with several hundred other samurai. Luckily for Shinzaemon, he finds 12 other samurais to help. Yes, just 12, this is like the Japanese equivalent of the movie, 300 where 300 Spartans take on the entire Persian army.
These thirteen assassins are lovable and reminiscent of common character archetypes in film. You have the dark mysterious one, the funny one, the mystical one, the young innocent one, a few you don’t attach yourself to, and of course the die-hard leader. They buy an entire town to use for their suicide mission and prepare to trap them en route to the Shogun. One of the most intriguing characters is Kiga Koyata (Yūsuke Iseya), who they find trapped in a cage for seducing his bosses wife, Upashi, on their way. Kiga is theorized to be a spirit and plays a vital role as commentator for the audience on being a true samurai warrior. I wish I could dazzle you with some specific Japanese mythology, but I’ve only been to one Anime convention.
This movie is all kinds of bad ass. As a budding photographer myself, I was in awe at the detailed shots in this movie. Many frames could have been frozen as award-winning photographs. As an English major, I never tire of the symbolic juxtaposition of red and white for good/evil or innocence/experience and one of the end scenes in this film did not disappoint. Much like Hitchock’s signature filmmaking moves in Dial M for Murder, he also uses leaves and other objects in the background environment to give the viewer a feel of peeping in. This is how more 3D films should be shot rather than adding scenes in later, yes I’m talking about you Tron Legacy .
The movie can be divided into two parts: one hour of build up which is five minutes to hate Lord Naritsugu and 55 minutes of assembling the plan, then another 60 minutes of amazingly choregraphed fighting. Even though hundreds of samurai are killed in this movie–seppuku (self-disembowling) is performed, and harakiri (head goes bye bye)–the gore is never over the top and not the main focus of the movie. At the core, it is what we love doing, rooting for the underdog.
So what makes a true samurai warrior? Watch it and find out.
