Cinema 2011 #49: 13 Assassins

“Your samurai brawls are crazy fun!”, shouts Kiga, the baker’s dozen in this sprawling Japanese saga, 13 Assassins. That this statement comes from a bloodied and wounded woodland killer, who’s been launching rocks at rivals’ heads for about 25 minutes into the epic 45-minute battle scene concluding Takashi Miike’s film, goes to show just how crazy this fun can be.

It’s mid 19th century Japan, and the old ways of the rising sun, the shogunate and the honour-bound samurai, are fading into the shadows of creeping modernity, but not before a sadistic enemy rises to threaten the peace. He’s Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), above the law by family ties and getting ready to climb up the political ladder. A poker-faced monster, he kills, rapes, kills, maims, kills and literally uses children for target practice, while wrapped in the finest silks and waited on hand and foot by terrified denizens, whose feet and hands he’s likely to chop off on a whim. To defeat him, seasoned warrior Shinzaemon (Kôji Yakusho) is convinced to assemble the titular team of noble samurai, each fighting for his own honour and bringing something to the team (experience, youth, wiliness, comic relief).  Add to this some badass Home Alone DIY and a trek through the mountain forests, and it’s merely a hop, skip and a training-montage till the real fun begins.

Miike, a dominant creative force in Japanese cinema, flitting between formats and genres and with an impressive 70 productions in his 20 year career, here remakes a 1963 film of the same name, and suffers inevitable comparisons to Kuroawa’s Seven Samurai. That film, regarded universally as one of the finest ever made, is the benchmark in both samurai cinema and ensemble storytelling, and producers aiming to emulate its perfection may as well just perform some preemptive seppuku right now (ahem, Weinstein brothers). 13 Assassins is its own film, with twice the workload and half the fun.

The film is labyrinthine in every sense of the word, sometimes a triumph, sometimes a mess. The third arc, essentially one battle in a remote village, is a triumph of editing and planning, breaking down the 13 into sub-groups, and following them in a logical and extremely watchable manner. The fights are violent and intense, with the highly skilled assassins taking on the 200 zealous guards of their prey, against the backdrop of a village they’ve sooped up with booby traps laid out with nifty Nipponese invention. But the fighting comes as timely relief to a long and convoluted build-up, where momentary lapses in attention are punished with prolonged bouts of confusion. Having 13 distinct characters to flesh out in 80 minutes is a hard task, and Miike doesn’t quite pull it off. As katanas clash and clang and blood begins to flow, it’s hard to care for those few whose backstory was a throwaway sentence an hour earlier.

Heads may well roll in a brilliant fight, but a couple may nod off before getting there.

3 ½ Likes.