13 Assassins
Takashi Miike
The story: In the dying days of the feudal system in Japan, Lord Naritsugu’s (Goro Inagaki) twisted appetite for sex and violence ignites widespread outrage. But he is above the law as he is the younger brother of the shogun. A trusted samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) is hired to kill Naritsugu and he rounds up 11 more men for the job. They are later joined by a hunter Koyata (Yusuke Iseya), making up the titular 13 killers.
Japanese director Takashi Miike is associated with graphic violence in movies such as Ichi The Killer (2001).
Perhaps having gotten that gore fest out of his system, 13 Assassins, a remake of Eeichi Kudo’s 1963 black- and-white film, feels restrained.
There are at least two scenes of seppuku, or ceremonial self-disembowelling, but Miike refrains from zooming in on the guts spilling out.
Not that there is a lack of onscreen violence, though some of it is implied rather than depicted. Before we see Lord Naritsugu, viewers are told horrific tales of his rapaciousness, including details of what he does to the daughter of a rebel leader.
It is hard to imagine that a man could be so depraved but Goro Inagaki from the evergreen J-pop outfit SMAP turns in a chilling performance with his cold, dead eyes.
The film then becomes a battle of wits between Shinzaemon, which veteran actor Koji Yakusho imbues with noble gravitas, and Naritsugu’s head samurai Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a tragic samurai who clings desperately onto the notion of loyalty. Both sides work out their attack and defence strategies as Naritsugu has to travel home from Edo.
All this is a set-up for the last stand, in which the vastly outnumbered 13 assassins turn a small peaceful town into a death trap.
Miike keeps the ensuing bloodbath riveting as there are myriad inventive ways in which the town has been rigged with booby traps and divisive barriers and incredibly, the 13 men seem to be gaining the upper hand at first.
Inevitably, the sheer numerical superiority of Naritsugu’s forces begins to wear them down.
It would not be giving anything away to reveal that there are losses among the assassins. But since there are 13 of them, personalities get lost in the mix and the emotional impact of some of the deaths is negligible.
Among the characters who do stand out are Masataka Kubota as Oguta, the poignantly young samurai, and Takayuki Yamada as Shinrokuro, a dispirited samurai taking a gamble on achieving something with his life.
While the plot to bring down Naritsugu is painted in black-and-white, good-and-evil extremes, Miike is also clearly ambivalent about the samurai ethos of honour, loyalty and sacrifice.
The hunter Koyata, played with humour and loose-limbed dexterity by model-actor Yusuke Iseya, grouses about the “boring samurai” and in one scene, displays a voracious sexual appetite as well.
It is a funny and disquieting moment that unmistakably marks this as a Miike flick.
(ST)