13 Assassins

Takashi Miike has never been one to shy away from controversy – two of his more well-known offerings, Ichi The Killer and Audition, can very easily attest to that. But his latest, 13 Assassins, takes rather a different path – in fact if it wasn’t for one scene alone (I won’t spoil it for anyone, but safe to say it’s pretty grim indeed) you’d be hard-pushed to tell it was Miike at all. For this very reason 13 Assassins could be a bit of a crowd-divider depending on expectations, but in proving Miike isn’t just a one-trick pony, it quite valiantly succeeds.

In many ways, it is a film of two halves. Much as Kubrick split Full Metal Jacket right down the centre between the boot camp and ‘Nam, Miike takes the best part of the first half to set up the band of samurai who will come to be his thirteen assassins, set on a mission in late Feudal Japan to execute the younger brother of the ruling Shogun, the deplorable Lord Naritsugu. Immune to the law and inclined to take full advantage of his fortuitous power, he’s a character that Miike would ordinarily have immense fun with, due to the sheer force of his inhumanity (rape, child murder, limb-hacking and tongue removal, just some of his crimes).

But Naritsugu is to a certain extent, somewhat restrained in favour of the narrative – his actions quite often happen off-screen. Whether this could or should have been the case is up for debate – quite often the dialogue and exposition can come off as incredibly clumsy, with dozens of names bandied about at rapid pace and connections to be made between a myriad characters, when at the film’s heart it’s simply one man (or two, at a push) against thirteen. I found myself wondering if Miike should have really been let off the hook to bend convention (this is a 'jidaigeki' period film, after all) in the way that Tarantino did with Inglourious Basterds – there are clear parallels between both directors, and restraint isn’t often something found in their cinematic language. But once the main event has been set up for the second half (a clash between the thirteen samurai and Naritsugu and his own warriors) the action is virtually non-stop until the credits roll.

In no way a wire-fu film (Zhang Yimou’s Hero springs to mind as a comparative touchstone of that genre, with very similar costumes and sets), 13 Assassins grounds itself in reality and, in the rather bloodier second half, pulls no punches in its frenetic depiction of samurai battle – CGI flaming oxen and all. But Miike never oversteps the mark in terms of what’s needed for the film, putting characters first and foremost in what is essentially an action costume drama. Get through the cluttered exposition of the first half, and you’re in for a whole lot of fun.