13 Assassins is a Japanese movie set in the nineteenth century during a time of peace as a sadistic man, Naritsugu, precipitously rises to power unopposed and unpunished because he is related to the head of government. If he is not stopped, the whole country will be plunged into chaos. The head of the legal arm of government decides to stop him by hiring a determined, retired samurai, Shinzaemon, to kill Naritsugu. Shinzaemon then gathers a small group to help. Justice is on their side, but the numbers are not. Will they succeed?
13 Assassins is a remake of a 1963 black and white film with the same name, which I have never seen. It is allegedly based on a historical event, but I do not know anything about the real story. I kept wondering if it was related to 47 Ronin. It was so good that I would have happily watched this film two times in a row. Even though it is over two hours long with subtitles and captions used to explain the role of the important people in the film, it never feels long.
13 Assassins is the movie that Outcast wanted to be. It succeeds in engaging in moral debates about the role of government and the people, specifically who serves the other. Do we have a duty to institutions even if evil men occupy those institutions or do we have a higher moral duty to justice? When is violence appropriate, if ever, and when is it wasteful? Who really has power? There are riveting fight scenes and training sequences throughout the film, but the last forty-five minutes of the movie is completely devoted to action that never feels monotonous and is still punctuated by these philosophical debates.
High concepts paired with extended fight sequences may not sound as if there will be room left for character development, but even with a great number of characters, 13 Assassins still manages to provide background, context and textured portraits of different people and excellent interchanges with parties. Even when we don’t get a lot of detail about a specific character, the actors’ excellent performances fill in the blanks so that we feel as if we know about these men that we have actually been told.
13 Assassins deserves special kudos for creating a great villain. Imagine a less emotional Joffrey from Game of Thrones. The momentum of the action depends on creating a villain that we have to hate and never feel sympathy for, but seems credibly, not cartoonishly, evil. From the judicious use of flashbacks to Goro Inagaki’s understated performance with sudden flashes of delight at the most intense moments, the movie achieves a rhythm of gradations from sensationalism to sober dawning on the surrounding characters, even those allied with him, that he draws the wrong lessons from every moment. Before he was bored and proving a point with his extreme behavior, but then he starts to have fun. He is actually getting worse, not better, as he draws closer to his mortality.
13 Assassins borrows from other genres such as J Horror to highlight the threat, which isn’t a surprise considering that the director, Takashi Miike, and the writer, Daisuke Tenga, collaborated on Audition, one of the legendary films in that genre. Japan’s fate is visually equated with the fate of women in this movie, and most of the women on screen are raped (off screen), tortured or killed. If distilled to its basic essence, this movie is a rape revenge movie, which I didn’t have a problem with, but I could see valid criticism that women rarely appear on screen without being victims of violence. There is one character, and she may be a sex worker, who does not suffer. What is intriguing about this violence is that women regardless of station, whether they are peasants or part of the ruling class, deserve justice. Specifically the word of one peasant woman becomes the battle cry for the samurai. The casual cruelty of the ruling class leads to civil war among the samurai, revolt and the ascendancy of the ordinary man and the credibility of a woman’s testimony against a powerful man in spite of his best efforts to render her powerless. Revolution comes when harm against women goes unpunished by governing institutions, and the people are filled with contempt against the impotence of their rulers.
13 Assassins has breathtaking scenes featuring man’s relationship to nature as further context that maybe man’s vain posturing is nothing when compared to the vastness of the forest, the ocean and the sky. There is not an aspect of this production that isn’t executed perfectly. The colors felt vibrant, and forget feeling as if you were there, I could almost smell the ocean. There is an implicit idea that the rulers are reminiscent of Babel and need to be struck down for their pride so nature can take over again. Before the battle even begins, the men are reminded of their origins as naked boys.
There are certain aspects of the story that get lost in translation. If you don’t come to 13 Assassins with the knowledge that people commit seppuku as an act of honor, and in this case, as a nonviolent protest to the governing authority, you could be confused throughout the movie. Even though I figured it out, I couldn’t help but think, “Oh you showed him by dying and eliminating yourself as an obstacle to his rise to power.” There is a scene when someone gets completely stabbed in the throat by a short sword, but later on, he is bouncing around as if the sword only grazed him. Apparently he is a spirit so even supernatural forces are on their side. While I understand that nature implicitly rebuked man’s self-importance, I didn’t realize that it is explicitly addressed in the script.
13 Assassins has gory, graphic moments, but considering the subject matter, I thought that it was appropriate. Still if you have a weak stomach, despite the quality of this movie, maybe you should skip it. Otherwise if you love action movies, I would bust out your reading glasses for this outstanding period piece that achieves epic status. It made me want to check out other samurai film. If you are a fan of Japanese movies, this movie is required viewing. It is equal parts intellectual and thrilling. I feel as if I owe them money for the honor of watching this film.