13 Assassins (2011)

This movie was a mixture of battlefield scenes plus a nonsense story. 13 men kills a group of 200 men and there is not a logical story to justify it!! Acting aside, which was not good at all, I could not find a good line in the story. I was expecting another ending for this movie. In my opinion the story is the weakest point in this movie. For example, in the middle of nowhere the group of warriors meet a bandit in their way. He happens to be much better in fight than other Samurais; I don't have any problem with this story, but the story must somehow support this that I can believe it. It was a poor job supporting this and this bandit stay alive at the end. The current rating in IMDb is unbelievable. It is not worth watching.

In the tradition of Kurosawas "The Seven Samurai", this movie is for Samurai-movie lovers. The story is simple: bad prince must be killed and thirteen men get the task to do it. There is very little background about most of the men - it's just about planning, followed by one huge festival of limb slashing, rolling heads and awesome sword fighting choreography. The last forty minutes absolutely rock! The martial battle cries and the typical Samurai yadda yadda and pseudo- philosophy (loyalty of course), are somewhat forgettable - there are better films out there, like "Ame Agaru" ,"Rashomon", "Seven Samurai", "Yojimbo", "Ran", "Zatoichi". Nevertheless, I personally liked it, since I got plenty of sword swinging Samurai scenes. But one must be a fan of such flicks to like 13 Assassins.

Takashi Miike, better known for darkly funny and sadistically violent fare like AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER, delivers an excellent period samurai film which also comments on the nature of honor, bushido and the concept of the samurai itself. The plot is rather simple: a group of 12 samurai (plus one other person they meet on the way) have decided it's in Japan's best interest to kill a lord with ties to the Shogun. The reason, well-established in early scenes, is because of his reckless disregard for human life. The first half is concerned with how the samurai conceive their plan and the second half is the execution of the plan, which is glorious and bloody. There was a lot of attention paid to the characters and their various motivations, and the story unfolded at a very nice pace: not too fast and not too slow. Also, being a Takashi Miike film, there was a couple of elements which put his stamp on the material (which is a remake). One is a particularly graphic suicide which opens the film, and the other is a naked, limbless woman without a tongue. One thing I did like about the movie was the meta-comments that were made on the concepts of bushido and the samurai, which completely removed any romanticism that might have at one point been associated with them. These ideas are expressed mainly through the 13th assassin and the lord (Naritsugu) who they're on a mission to kill. In such a stunning film, the only thing I can really complain about are some obvious CGI bulls (which are on fire) that appear in the second half. Other than that, this is an impressive movie no matter which way you look at it. Highly recommended, especially for fans of Japanese samurai films.

I have found the film just OK. For my tastes it is really too old school. Directing/filming fights in this way, is for me prehistory. I do not like either films where all is special effects. But here all is just confused and flat. So many people fighting, no breaks, no special angles, direction is really straight and old school. There are moments that in my opinion are even ridiculous. I cannot understand how this film got to get 7,6 rating here and 96% in Rottentomatoes! That's just extremely exager-rated. Anyway, the acting is OK, and in the fights (which are concentrated in the last third of the movie) there are some good moments. But honestly I felt absolutely nothing watching this film. No tension, no emotion, no excitement, no epic feeling. And the characters gave me also absolutely nothing. The film is written and directed and shooted in a way that I felt just a distant observer of a flat scene.