13 Assassins

As good as it gets

This is my favorite Miike film. About 25 years ago, I had the chance to watch the original 1963 Eiichi Kudo's B&W film (that is the basis for this one) in a cinema, and Takashi Miike's version has nothing to envy from it, standing as its own as a wonderful jidaigeki film. It's far more graphic, violent and darker (both in action and cinematography), with great performances and very discrete VFX's. My only complain is the first DVD version I got was dubbed to English (dubbed Japanese films are AWFUL, please!), and had to wait a whole year for the Bluray, with Japanese audio and excellent English subtitles. If you like films like Shogun Assassin, 7 Samurai and Pulp Fiction, this movie is for you. By the way, Koji Endo's soundtrack for this film is awesome, don't miss it.

Awesome!

if you like Japanese period movies, this is a must-watch.

Bought and blindly viewed, only by reference image 4.25 / and sound 4.25 / 5. We really liked what counts and how it counts

A rather good movie. Not amazing but quite enjoyable. 1/2 story, 1/2 fighting. In that order and definitely not overlapping :rofl:

While 13 Assassins is clearly derivative of the Kurosawa classic, Seven Samurai, there’s enough originality to it to make it a formidable film in its own right. Set in the feudal era of Japan, a group of 13 samurai come together in order to kill the Shogun’s half-brother to prevent him from plunging the country back into war, but to get to him the samurai must first defeat an army of 200 men in spectacularly bloody carnage. The choreography of the massive battle sequences is amazing. It’s not the clean sword fighting that one is used to in samurai films; this one turns into a knock-down, drag-out fight where everything gets turned into a weapon. However, there are a few too many characters to keep track of and some of the cultural stuff gets lost in translation. Still, 13 Assassins is an adrenaline-packed action/adventure film that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Well... you watch an hour of backstory and then 40 minutes of non-stop samauri bloodletting violence. It's a Japanese movie with English subtitles and since I'm not all that into Japanese history, I didn't really understand the whole "Emperor/Shogun" whatever political thing. All I know is there was a really bad guy who was about to get a high-ranking position, and a handful of samauri warriors were commissioned to keep that from happening. All in all, for a film I didn't really understand, this was a good movie. You just have to keep up with the storyline as it goes along but if violent samauri action is your thing, the wait is definitely rewarded.

The original title of the film is Jûsan-nin no Shikaku.