The Japanese film-maker doesn’t hold back in his rendition of the 1963 film, with an epic battle that remains one of the most impressive action scenes in history
Within the first 20 minutes of Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, there is brutal murder, ritual suicide and political corruption, all taking place in Edo period Japan.
The film’s central villain, Lord Naritsugu – the Shogun’s half-brother, played with an almost ethereal detachment by Gorô Inagaki – has a taste for depravity that knows no bounds. At the beginning of the film, he slaughters the family of a local lord with such sadistic cruelty it pushes the justice minister, Sir Doi (Mikijirô Hira), into enlisting a samurai, Shinzaemon Shimada (Kōji Yakusho), to assassinate Naritsugu.
Shinzaemon gratefully accepts the job, telling Sir Doi: “I will accomplish your wish with magnificence.” Shinzaemon then recruits a team of skilled samurai to help him achieve this secret mission. But despite Narigutsu’s homicidal tendencies, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), an old rival of Shinzaemon’s, gathers 200 warriors to protect him.
13 Assassins is really a movie of two halves. In the buildup, the characters are allowed room to breathe and, like an 1840s A-Team, they construct a series of ingenious traps.
But the second half – the final 45 minutes of bloody chaos – is where the film really comes into its own. Even after 16 years, it remains an unbeatable and highly effective piece of samurai carnage.
The samurai create, as Shinzaemon puts it, “a town of death”. The superior force blunders into booby trap after booby trap, with visceral and deadly results.
It is admittedly a little hard to keep track of all 13 assassins in the chaos of battle but it doesn’t matter. 13 Assassins features so much full-throttle, slice’n’dice samurai mayhem that keeping track of the plot no longer matters.
What’s clear, though, is that Narisugu is such an evil character that we really want him to get his comeuppance. He amputates limbs and chops off tongues for fun, he stabs people for laughs, and his hobbies include shooting arrows into children at point-blank range.
Our moral compass is Shinzaemon, and Yakusho brings a stoic yet seething intensity to his performance. Shinzaemon is driven by his outrage of Naritsugu. His contempt is palpable, not simply for his sadism but for his total lack of worth; at one point the character scornfully describes him as “a decorative man”. But the mission is also an opportunity for Shinzaemon, who, after years of peace, takes great pride in being able to demonstrate his skill as a samurai.
13 Assassins is one of four of the Japanese film-maker’s collaborations with the writer Daisuke Tengan – including the 1999 horror classic Audition and the new film Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo. Compared with the duo’s usually demented style, 13 Assassins is unexpectedly straightforward. It presents a classic tale of right versus wrong but the film’s epic battle scene goes down as one of the most impressive continuous – and gruesome – action scenes in history.
13 Assassins can be streamed via SBS On Demand in Australia. It’s available for purchase via Apple TV and Prime Video in Australia and the UK, and it can be streamed via Prime Video and Kanopy in the US
