13 Assassins | Little White Lies

13 Assas­sins

06 May 2011 / Released: 06 May 2011

Two men in black samurai-style outfits fighting with swords in a rustic outdoor setting.
Two men in black samurai-style outfits fighting with swords in a rustic outdoor setting.
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Anticipation.

He’s made over 80 films in 20 years, so Miike should have no trouble handling 13 heroes.

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Enjoyment.

By turns exciting, horrific, funny and thrilling – but mostly intense and always spectacular.

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In Retrospect.

Miike’s magnificent 13 mark both the end of an era and the boundary of a genre.

Takashi Miike’s mag­nif­i­cent 13 marks both the end of an era and the bound­ary of a genre.

If 2007’s Sukiya­ki West­ern Djan­go refash­ioned Ser­gio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghet­ti west­ern Djan­go (itself heav­i­ly influ­enced by Aki­ra Kurosawa’s 1961 Yojim­bo) into a hyper-stylised post-mod­ern rever­ie on the end­less traf­fic between Amer­i­ca and oth­er cul­tures, then 13 Assas­sins, the lat­est film from Japan­ese cinema’s impos­si­bly pro­lif­ic bad boy Miike Takashi, sim­i­lar­ly explores the belea­guered codes of mas­culin­i­ty that link the jidaige­ki (or samu­rai peri­od piece) and the western.

The year is 1844, short­ly before the birth of Japan’s enlight­ened Mei­ji era. In sym­bol­ic re-enact­ment of the shogunate’s death throes, a samu­rai com­mits sep­puku. The sui­cide is a protest against Lord Nar­it­sugu Mat­su­daira (Ina­ga­ki Gorô), an effete psy­chopath whose sta­tus as the Shogun’s younger broth­er lets him rape, dis­mem­ber and mur­der with impuni­ty, pos­ing a con­tra­dic­to­ry chal­lenge to every feu­dal value.

Secret­ly tasked with assas­si­nat­ing him, semi-retired samu­rai Shin­za­e­mon Shi­ma­da (Yakusho Kôji) assem­bles a team for the sui­cide mis­sion, trans­form­ing a wood­land vil­lage into a death trap. There the 13 assas­sins will face an army of 200, led by Nar­it­sugu and Shinzaemon’s long-time rival Han­bei (Ichimu­ra Masachi­ka). There will be blood – indeed, there will be a total massacre.

Miike’s film is as much a reimag­in­ing of Kurosawa’s 1954 Sev­en Samu­rai as a remake of Kudo Eiichi’s 1963 Jusan-nin No Shikaku – but it plays like a revi­sion­ist west­ern. Here, Shin­za­e­mon and his wild bunch must do what must be done’, yet the val­ues of hero­ism and hon­our that they cel­e­brate also seem entire­ly out­mod­ed, as char­ac­ters repeat­ed­ly con­trast these days’ with the nos­tal­gia-tinged age of war’.

Mean­while, spec­tac­u­lar­ly mount­ed fight sequences fill the film’s entire sec­ond half, expos­ing bat­tle itself not only as a mud­dy, bloody affair where there is, as one char­ac­ter puts it, No samu­rai code or fair play”, but also as a pro­longed exer­cise in fatal futility.

You bore me,” com­plains the thir­teenth assas­sin Koy­a­ta (Iseya Yusuke) in the thick of the fight – and while view­ers are unlike­ly to feel like­wise when con­front­ed by Miike’s intense visu­al style, there is an unde­ni­able whiff of fin-de-siè­cle melan­choly to all the on-screen carnage.

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