With more than eighty films under his belt, ranging from family fare (Zebraman, The Great Yokai War) to the unconventional (The Happiness of the Katakuris), Takashi Miike can now best be described as prolific and versatile. It’s an appraisal that marks a significant departure from the controversy once affixed to his name after his initial burst of hyper-violent films (Ichi the Killer, Audition).
Having crafted a more traditional Japanese epic of the grandest scale, Miike returns to the Festival for the ninth time with 13 Assassins, a remake of a 1963 film of the same name and based on a real-life incident.
The year is 1844. A young lord rapes and kills with impunity by virtue of his political connections. Though the era of the samurai is fading, an honest government official covertly enlists thirteen swordsmen to assassinate this sadistic lord before he can seize more power. With the clock ticking, the assassins lay a deadly trap for the lord and his army of bodyguards, culminating in one of the bloodiest, muddiest swordfights ever put to film.
As the leader of the thirteen samurai, Koji Yakusho (Tokyo Sonata, Babel) invokes Toshiro Mifune at both his most contemplative and charismatic. But it’s Miike who steals the show through sheer spectacle – the climactic battle scene lasts a breathless forty-five minutes – filling the screen with visual references to more than just the original film; there are echoes of every samurai classic imaginable, not to mention some distinctly Miike touches. Let’s just say, when the blood spills it flows.
If you’re looking for another genre-bending, tongue-in-cheek martial arts spectacle, look elsewhere. 13 Assassins offers no gimmicks, wires, bullet time or modern soundtrack: it’s dead-serious, old-fashioned samurai action with both feet planted firmly on blood-soaked ground. –TIFF
