Review: 13 Assassins

With something in the region of 30 films plopped out since 2000, Takashi Miike has to be one of the most productive directors in the world. He's also indisputably one of the most extreme, with releases like Ichi the Killer, Audition and Visitor Q clawing at the boundaries of taste and sanity. Of course, with such an extensive back catalogue, he has also been responsible for comedies and family-friendly fare, but it's his more horrifying output that has predominantly established his reputation in the West.

13 Assassins, one of Miike's most accessible and straightforward films to get an international release, might go some way towards persuading Western audiences of his diversity as well as his fertility. The film is a straight-ahead samurai epic (chanbara) based on the relatively obscure 1963 film of the same name by Eiichi Kudo. In the period just before the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the sadistic and murderous young lord Naritsugu, brother to the Shogun, threatens Japan's stability when he is invited to assume a more powerful position in Edo. A secret plan is hatched by the Shogun's advisors to kill Naritsugu before he arrives. The task is entrusted to veteran samurai Shinzaemon, who gathers 12 like-minded warriors to ambush the sick puppy at a quiet village along the way.

Given Miike's reputation, 13 Assassins is a surprisingly stately affair for the first two thirds of its run-time. Classic samurai movie archetypes abound as Shinzaemon gathers his crew of murder machines, including the gruff and skillful Hirayama (a clear riff on the strong, silent template elsewhere exemplified by stone-faced lone wolf Kyuzo from Seven Samurai) and Ogura, the enthusiastic youth with little experience but a warrior's spirit.

The grimy fingerprints of Miike's horror past are still present, primarily in the early scenes depicting the cruelty of Naritsugu. Goro Inagaki plays Naritsugu like a spoilt child idly burning ants with a magnifying glass as he rapes newlywed brides and uses children as target practice for his bow. Most disturbing of all, and most distinctly Miike, is a village girl who Naritsugu punishes by slicing off all her limbs and cutting out her tongue. This is Miike's odd comfort zone, and the director effectively conducts the misery of these scenes to firmly mark out Naritsugu as an irredeemable nightmare, and a valid target for our heroes.

Once the scene is set and the assassins' trap is laid for their target and his 200-odd retinue, a sleepy Japanese boarding village is the scene for one of the most drawn out battle sequences in recent memory. It rivals some of Kurosawa's set pieces for sheer length and depth, but without any of the let-up that the legendary director built into his battles to allow the audience (and the characters) a breather.

Arrows split the sky. Houses are blown up. A herd of weaponised cattle is unleashed. And above all, there are sword fights. Hapless bodyguards are slashed and skewered in almost every conceivable way, each of the assassins slaying their foes in a variety of styles. It's a smorgasbord of carnage, and it's consistently thrilling in its sheer commitment. The action is shot brilliantly, the camera capturing the grit of combat, the bloody haze in the air and the stunning beauty of the battle's forested surroundings with equal vigour.

The audacity of the final battle does hide some lingering flaws. Tonally, the film veers from relative accuracy to moments of surrealism in a way that proves jarring. Both styles are executed well, but being asked to simultaneously believe that 13 samurai could chew through several hundred armed men and that the film's events also took place in a realistic historical setting is a little too much. Given the preposterousness of the film's concept, a more general sense of style and surrealism could have served the film well, as well as making its more baffling moments part of the fun.

The acting, especially by Koji Yakusho, who invests chief assassin Shinzaemon with wry humour and fatherly empathy along with all the honour and determination, is convincing, but few characters are given more than one layer. The group's number is unwieldy as well, too many of the 13 remaining essentially anonymous and undefined as characters.

The fact that 13 Assassins doesn't transcend the limits of its genre isn't necessarily a criticism. By the looks of things, that was never Miike's intention. 13 Assassins happily sits within the chanbara genre, content to take the themes set by its predecessors and execute them with startling conviction. In this sense, the film's main strength is echoed by one of its best (and possibly slightly mistranslated) lines, spoken by Shinzaemon upon being told of Naritsugu's depravities and the mission at hand: "I will achieve this task...with magnificence."