13 Assassins Review

Release Date (UK) – TBC
Certificate (UK) – TBC
Country – Japan
Director – Takashi Miike
Runtime – 126 mins
Starring – Kôji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yûsuke Iseya, Gorô Inagaki

Set at the fall of the samurai era, 13 Assassins is the story of a group of warriors (mostly samurai) who band together in an attempt to assassinate the sadistic Lord Naritsuga Matsudaira (Inagaki). This is because they are worried about what would happen if he were ever to occupy the Shogun’s throne – the fear is that he would bring malice and cruelty upon the nation (he even claims at one point he would like to bring back the ‘age of war’ that plagued the country in an age past).

You won’t be far into the film until you (or those that know Akira Kurosawa’s work) will come to realise that this is nothing but a direct remake of Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai. We have a band of noble samurai reinforcing a small village as they await the enemy’s arrival (who greatly outnumbers them), and there are only minor differences from the original’s plot present.

Even the seven wonderfully realised main characters in Seven Samurai are repeated here in amongst the titular thirteen assassins; from the calm and clever leader, to the crazy loner warrior who claims to despise samurais (the excellent Toshirô Mifune in Kurosawa’s film), to the stern samurai who is far more skillful than the rest, right down to the young apprentice samurai who wishes to fight despite his age. These characters are unfortunately not as well developed as those upon which they are based, however. One problem and cause of this might be Miike’s choice to increase the number of heroes from seven to thirteen – meaning we get to know each of them less personally than in Kurosawa’s film, due to the screen time needed to introduce and address all thirteen men.

Where Seven Samurai had depth, elegance and a clever use of tension to match its excellent battle scenes, all that this film has is action. In its action though and its depiction of battles, it succeeds marvelously – Miike’s skill for gore, for which he is well known, rubs off very well here. What seems like a weighty introduction to the film we later realise was just a ruse purely constructed to make us despise the main villain here to the utmost extreme. Using the comic book-style of extreme horror that Miike is renowned for (for example, with Audition and Ichi the Killer) – which seems a little out of place here – Miike shows Lord Naritsuga committing the most heinous atrocities merely for his own amusement; and for the rest of the film he retains this ‘noble who kills just to satiate his boredom’-attitude.

The problem of this essentially being a straight remake of Kurosawa’s masterpiece is that it doesn’t acknowledge itself as such, which may lead most to the conclusion that all Miike is really doing here is stealing from cinema’s past and not recognising his influences. Another way to look at this, however, might be that Miike is trying to pay homage to one of cinema’s greatest films, as a form of respect for Kurosawa. It is a minor issue, but one can’t help but wonder if had this been presented as a direct remake/updating of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, it might have garnered more respect from it’s audience for what it does manage to achieve.

Seven Samurai isn’t the only influence here; this also has a strong western feel to the film. Such westerns as A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven were of course themselves remakes of Kurosawa’s samurai films Yojimbo and Seven Samurai respectively, so all influences here really revert back to the Japanese master filmmaker anyway, perhaps with a little Leone influence also thrown in.

Putting the lack of depth aside, the action here excels remarkably, which some may argue is all that truly matters for this type of film. As soon as the enemy is caught in our heroes’ trap the film doesn’t let up in terms of excitement. Miike steps outside of his horror comfort zone here and strives to create something quite grand, and succeeds in producing his most accomplished and polished film to date. All in all, fans of Japanese samurai ventures should come out thrilled and exhilarated, despite this film’s flaws.

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