13 Assassins

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

I'm always excited for a Takashi Miike film. The man is prolific, he does anything and everything and consequently he can be a bit hit and miss but he is ALWAYS fascinating. The last time he did a samurai film was back in 2004 with Izo, but that was a completely different beast. Miike's cut back on his penchant for post-modernism in favour of creating a far more traditional (and easily digestible) samurai few-against-many film. He's even cut back on the extreme violence. There's still a great deal of blood letting but he's far more restrained, not just with the violence but with his editing and use of CG. It's old-school and it's great.

There's a great cast of characters and familiar faces lead by Kôji Yakusho who I recently watched again in the brilliant Cure. They manage to set up the band of samurai and give them each a unique little backstory. The story is very simple and you've probably seen it told before in Samurai films or Westerns or Sci-fi, what have you. An evil lord is about to come to power so a bunch of guys team up to take him out for the good of the country. But it's the characters and the action that make this film what it is.

The final battle, against the obligatory impossible odds, is just awesome. It really does feel like a classic film. I have to admit, I've only seen a handful of Akira Kurosawa films, something I hope to rectify soon, nor have I seen the original 13 Assasins, but I can understand the comparisons. It just feels like good cinema.