13 Assassins

Overview

Anyone familiar with Takashi Mike films - of which several are released each year - knows to expect blood, or rivers of it. 13 Assassins is no exception; there are a lot of wet swords, leaking bodies and severed samurai scattered throughout.

The film opens on a tranquil courtyard, the centre of the screen occupied by a kneeling solitary man whose face is awash with stony concentration. He pulls open his garment and feels around his waist like a carpenter stroking a piece of wood, his hands indicating a looming deed. We then realise the act that is about to take place, the camera locks onto his unflappable face and the awfully resonating sound of his ceremonial knife entering his stomach is heard: first flesh, then guts, then bone  -  none of it on view on this occasion but it still feels real, gory and emphatically somatic. The man is performing what is known as Seppuku, or 'stomach-cutting', an act of suicide that becomes the pretext for the rest of the film and the reason for a specially commissioned mission.

At its heart, 13 Assassins is a classic samurai film, which makes sense given that it's a remake of Eichi Kudo's 1963 movie of the same name. We're dropped into Japan during the Edo period, feudalism is withering, samurai are out of work or have simply become disillusioned, self-righteous henchmen. The story follows the ageing and retired samurai come-fisherman Shinzaemon Shimada (played perfectly by Koji Yakusho). I have to admit that it's refreshing to see an older character take the narrative by the reins, and we get to enjoy Shinzaemon Shimada being called forth to assemble a small but reliable team of samurai willing to give their life to the cause. Expressions of dutiful resolve and honour are all over the screen. The strategy is complex but the mission is clear: kill Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki) - a bored, barbaric and psychotically numb ruler who is the half-brother of the Shogun. The cruelty of the lord is made obvious by his various indulgences - rape, hacking off heads, hacking off limbs, cutting out tongues, target practice on a single family and so on. Some of these atrocities are seen and others are implied, but we soon get the idea that Naritsugu has an impending date with bladed justice.

After extensive strategising in quiet corners and dim lighting, Shinzaemon and his men get to staging the trap, a fabricated town that the samurai build and modify to look like any other provincial settlement. Needless to say, Lord Naritsugu and his 200+ warriors and guards enter and like flies in honey discover that there is no way out. The dramatic and slightly confounding climax follows - a stack of death, some flaming stampeding buffalo that perhaps needed more time in the CGI department, heroic acts and muddy, bloody, slippery, messy fighting (something else to notice here are the colours as bodily liquids, dirt and Japanese fabrics collaborate). It's completely gluing and totally fun, but only if you're willing to follow many different deaths occurring all over the place. As the team of 13 are slowly decimated, the final encounter occurs between Shinzaemon and Naritsugu - which is interestingly staged and executed. Although justice is found, the ending is ambiguous and ghostly. One thing is for certain at the end of the film, there is nothing romantic about death, it just hurts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NgPC74-Tde8