FF REVIEW: 13 ASSASSINS

Damn. I need that movie ASAP!

Seen it at the Venice International Film Festival last month-with the Master of Mayhem himself in attendence! Perhaps the best samurai movie made by someone other than Akira Kurosawa (this is the type of movie Miike was born to make). The movies second half is indeed insane as it pretty much counts as one of the longest action sequences ever (almost an hour).

Well, I saw this movie tonight at the Florida Film Festival and I was very happy to see it on the big screen. What little I've seen of Miike in the past, I'll just say that I wasn't as big of a fan as most hardcore film fans are. But, after seeing this movie, I'll have to give him his props.

 

There isn't too much to say besides the review that Jacob Hall did, but it was great watching it in a movie theatre. It indeed is a pretty movie to look at. But, the movie overall is just a blast to watch. Simple yet effective. What a great 40 minute or so action sequence. And I also enjoyed how you had the wacky character of Koyata Kiga to contrast with the otherwise serious nature of the film.

 

But anyhow, this is a must-see if you love this genre, and if you can't watch it on the big screen, get it as soon as you can on the small screen.

At the end of the film, I started to get this notion that Lord Naritsugu was, in a strange way, one of the more honest people in the film.  Everyone else had this outrage at the horrors he committed, but in some ways they were all just looking for a reason to use their swords and spears.  Whereas Naritsugu loved violence for the sake of violence.  In fact, I think he's the one who really changed at the end of the film.

 

At first he thought his love of violence was a way of keeping his servants in line, of maintaining the order of the class structure.  However, at the end, I think he saw violence as a unifying force.  A great equalizer.  When Shinzaemon says "Why would you kick his head?" Naritsugu responds with something like "If you cut mine off, you can kick it too."  When he is mortally wounded, he experiences fear and a desire to live that he has probably never felt before.  And his final lines are something like "Thank you for giving me the most exciting day of my life."

 

I also think Miike plays with this notion with the character of the hunter, Koyata.  Whereas we are horrified by Naritsugu's sadism, we are charmed by Koyata's casual enthusiasm for combat.  Are they really so different?  When the hunter is revealed to be some kind of immortal spirit, we realize that the film is saying that conflict and chaos may be the natural order of things.  That the code the samurai lived and died by might simply be vanity.

 

And yet, despite all that, the film works like gangbusters on a surface level.  Like all good men on a mission movies, it has a handful of characters that you care about and identify with for different reasons.  Shinzaemon is a complete badass... after he sees the woman who had her limbs cut off, the way he turns his head and says "How fate smiles on me." raises goosebumps.

 

Great point.  I too thought the film was about identity - or lack of identity among the assassins.  All are useless until they are commanded into battle and permitted to kill on behalf of something or someone.  Naritsugu is a sadist and kills indiscriminately to continue his rule by fear and to keep the servants in their place.  At the beginning he's disappointed that, after raping the wife the husband doesn't dare draw his sword in retaliation but instead goes to tend to his wife.  These men have all been trained to kill and yet deny their instincts until given permission.  In that sense the assassins and Naritsugu are two sides to the same coin.
 

 

Good post, Bailey. GREAT AMAZING MOVIE. Yeah, it's not the deepest film ever, but it's works. All of it. The final battle has to be seen to be believed. I was giddy during the whole thing, until things start to turn sour. But even then, I was fully engrossed in the film.

 

Having the most evil sonofabitch as the main villain helps. He's so despicable that you can't wait to see him get slaughtered, but then as the film progresses you see how human and thoughtful this monster can be. The good guys aren't anything we haven't seen before but they characters work because their cause is soo hopeless. Then when you see them execute their plan to conquer an army 10x their size, you're completely with them. I can't stop thinking about this film. Easily the most exhilarating film experience this year. It's a shame that more people won't see it in a theater.

Edited by Pop Zeus - 5/30/11 at 8:13pm

I don't get what you guys are saying about Naritsugu. He was simply a rabid dog that needed to be put down. The movie never argued for some sort of equivalence or shading between the two sides. Shinzaemon's speech to that guy after seeing the difigured woman is simply the relief of a tool finding out that after a life of misuse it is finally the time for it to be used properly. Not some gleeful, sadistic bloodlust. Whatever condemnation of the Samurai code of honor is in this movie pertains to Hanbei's character. This was a movie operating with its cards open on the table and the better for it.

I'm not advocating some equivalency between Shinzaemon and Naritsugu. If anything, the film deliberately sets up Hanbei as his counterpart. What I do think is in play wrt Naritsugu is his totally messed up point of view. He has his own nutty code that he follows, even though he's mad with power. The ending where he's crying and afraid is a pure sign of that. My only point is that he's not only a despicable villain but one who seems like a real person.

I don't think the film wants the viewer to draw direct comparison between Naritsugu and Shinzaemon.  I'm certainly not suggesting the film was saying they're the same.  But there's a potentially interesting comparison to be made between Naritsugu and the immortal spirit who relishes conflict.  That the sadistic bad guy is the one who changes, and comes to see his desire for violence in a different way, is interesting.

 

With Shinzaemon, and the other samurai, for that matter, I do think the film wants us to question their desire for combat.  I think it wants us to see the grim way they die, and wonder just how much glory and honor are to be found within the rivers of blood.  But that doesn't mean it's making them out to be sadists any more than, say, (just trying to come up with an example) The Hurt Locker was making William James out to be a sadist.

I think that Naritsugu does come to a revelation about his life at the end, but that's because it's the first time his authority has been challenged. Even still, it's not as if he flips hard or really changes much. He just comes to a more nuanced outlook. Really what happens throughout the film, I think, is that initially he comes off as a cruel monster because of the way he's introduced but as the story progresses, we learn more about what makes him tick. That leads to a more nuanced portrait of him as a thinking monster but really, he's just as cruel and callous as he was at the beginning of the film.

 

The good guys don't really change much because they've made peace with their dwindling role in society. They're just looking for a samurai's exit.

I'm not saying the change in Naritsugu makes him a better person.  He's as violent and evil as ever.  But the violence of the film all has this tinge of class warfare, of reinforcing social codes; when really, if anything, what the violence illustrates is how meaningless and arbitrary those distinctions are when stripped down to one fucker with a pointy implement vs. another fucker with a pointy implement.  In his sick and twisted mind, Naritsugu came to see this as a kind of a beautiful, even life-affirming thing.  Hence, a man who, in daily life, probably would not stand for even the most minor infractions from an inferior against his social standing, when engaged in mortal combat, would happily state that, if he loses, his killer can treat his severed head like it was nothing more than a ball made for a children's game.

I didn't feel there was anything behind Naritsugu's actions than deep sociopathy. Everything he ever said came to me as simply the most facile rationalizations he could come up with. If he were of a lower class he'd still try to do what he did here, only in secret, and just change his rationalization.

Obviously the movie is not saying that he's violent because he's a member of the elite class.  But his status allows him to operate that way with impunity for awhile, and so he comes to assume that it's the natural order of things.  Only when his life is truly threatened, only when he has to actually consider the violence as something more than just for his sick amusement, does he see that the assumption was a lie.  He doesn't grow, he doesn't improve, but he is changed by the experience.  He is excited, tickled even, by real threat.  By actual stakes.  And probably for the first time he begins to understand himself.  He's a fucking psychopath, yes.  And he embraces it.  So much so that he thanks his killer.

Just rented this today. Holy hell it was amazing. The last ~1hr  were some of the most epic minutes ever in a movie. That final battle has to really be seen to believe it. Easily the best samurai film not done by Kurosawa, I'd put it right on a level by itself, right below his work. Miike really was born to make this kind of movie. I really hope we see him come back to this kinda work!

Fucking immense. My favorite movie I've seen of 2011 by far.

So I just got the blu for this and was checking out the deleted scenes just to know what was in the director's cut, and the edits (save for arguably the whorehouse scene) are baffling. The pacing's better in the director's cut (or at least it's more deliberate), the character work is brief and always works, and the exposition makes more sense. Also, actual death scenes are cut from the final battle. Why the distributors would think killing certain assassins off-screen during the climactic battle is a good idea is beyond me.

Wait I watched this on Netflix streaming so.......I didn't see the director's cut right?

No, probably not. The director's cut is a lean 141 minutes, methinks. But I love this film so I think it's kinda lame that you can't watch both on the disc, since clearly there's plenty of space. Especially since the director's cut is the version that played internationally.

 

Of course, the whorehouse scene is Miike's favorite. 

hmm. guess ill have to buy the directors cut. watched it on 'flix and loved the shit out of it. interested to see just how much better it could get

And the director's cut isn't available in America right?

We got the 126 minute version in the UK and a quick scan of the eu amazon sites suggests that is the version they got. I think you can only get the director's cut from Japan, which is a shame because right now this is neck and neck with TREE OF LIFE as my favourite film of the year and it's an amazing movie from Miike. I love Miike but this is definitely a step-up from his usual stuff, in fact I think it's really only equal to AUDITION in his filmography.

 

Now I'm a nut for samurai films, so I was immediately going to adore the film anyways, but I kind of liked how this film took usual samurai themes and explored them in different ways. A lot of the 'great' Samurai films deal with the conflict between what is right and what is neccesary, what the heart wants and what the status-quo will allows. As such the great Samurai films tend to be about characters going against the grain, becoming rebels within a system that they can no longer take part in. What strikes me about 13 ASSASSINS is that in intent Lord Naritsugu, as Bailey pointed out in his amazing post, is the character most dislocated from the system and status quo. He's the force of change which seeks to shift the equilibrium and who is bound by his position, but whilst most Samurai protagonists are rendered inert by the tropes of feudal society, Naritsugu is sort of muzzled and corralled by it. He's a shithead, but he's also trapped within his own little world and there's this seeming radius of destruction that emenates from him.

 

What is also interesting is that the Assassin's themselves break the status quo of honourable combat. Most Samurai films tend to have the antagonists finally dispatch the protagonist by use of rifle or subterfuge as the protagonist is unmatched in honourable combat. In this film the protagonists know that an honourable fight is not what will win the day and the film seems to be about the assassin's slowly disassembling their own code so that they can become more ruthless, pragmatic, killing machines.