13 ASSASSINS - MIFF 2011

Every year I seem to mention my strange love / hate relationship with prolific director Takashi Miike.  He has the ability to make the most amazing films, but equally he can make utter trash.  It makes it hard to trust him and go blindly into a film just because he directed it.  “13 Assassins” however has had some amazing reviews, probably Miike’s best since “Audition”, so I thought it was a safe bet to check this film out.

Set in 19^th century Japan during a time of peace, a group of 13 samurais are being put together in clandestine fashion for the sole purpose to assassinate Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, the Shogun’s sadistic half brother.  With the Lord’s lust for bloodshed and violence increasing, the time for something to be done is now, but due to his political position (not to mention who he is family with) and the scandal and shame that would bestow the government if they stood him down, it must be done in secret.  After the group is formed, they then work out their best plan of attack for their suicidal mission.  They decide to ambush the Lord and his army at a small town, which gives them the best chance of success.  Still thirteen versus over two hundred soldiers is not great odds in anyone’s language.  Do they really have a chance of success?

The reviews are right, this is a very fine film and it probably is Miike’s best since 1999’s “Audition”.  The majority of the film consists of Shinzaemon Shimada (played by one of my favourite Japanese actors, Koji Yakusho) searching for and finding his team of assassins and then convincing them to join their cause with the distinct possibility that they will not return from the mission alive.  Obviously the nature of this means that the film is going to build very slowly (which I really liked and thought was well paced), but it explodes into a 45 minute battle scene at the conclusion that is amazing.  There is some very fine swordplay in this finale, as well as a number of other inventive ways to separate and kill the enemy.  One of my favourite parts is when one of the samurai’s runs to a part of the town where he has placed hundreds of swords blade down, so during the battle wherever he is, he has a weapon to use against the enemy (amusingly though, none of the villains ever pick up one of these weapons themselves).  This is quite a restrained film for Miike and it doesn’t have much of that trademark weirdness that he is known for.  One scene that is pure Miike is when Shinzaemon meets a victim of Lord Naritsugu’s bloodlust – a young woman whose limbs have been dismembered leaving only a living torso.  He wasn’t done there though as he also carved the girls tongue out as well.  The images of this poor girl are so strange and disturbing, and so Miike.  However other than this and a brief flashback of a woman eating her placenta (!) there is no weirdness to be found.

The only problem I have with the film is that although a large amount of time is spent forming the team, due to the large number of characters (thirteen is a lot), we never really get to know them all individually.  This also makes it hard to differentiate who’s who during some of the battle scenes.  Interestingly, the version we saw at MIFF is another one of those “international versions” which this time is eighteen minutes shorter than the version shown in Japan.  Apparently most of that extra running time is devoted to a long scene the night before the big battle when the assassins visit a brothel, where a lot of character development is now lost.  While it is a shame that we lost this material in our version, what we did get still makes for a very fine film indeed.

3.5 Stars.