Review of 13 Assassins

On my list of favorite directors, there is always a place for Takashi Miike. I was introduced to Miike with Audition in 1999 and I have collected his titles like a hunter would deer heads. Go up and down my DVD collection and you will find Ichi the Killer, 3 Extremes, Visitor Q, Gozu, One Missed Call and Imprint. I don't know if any other working director has as many titles represented on my 'owned' list. Naturally, when I saw that Miike was bringing his latest effort, 13 Assassins, to the Toronto International Film Festival, I was sure to secure a ticket for the screening. 13 Assassins is a bit of a departure for the hard working Miike (Miike has 82 director credits to his name on IMDb.com). His films have generally been violent films set in modern times. And many of his films have been banned or misunderstood (Audition, Ichi the Killer). The synopsis for 13 Assassins - A group of assassins come together for a suicide mission to kill an evil lord - doesn't read like a Takashi Miike film, but with the violence and torture evident in the film's first reel, I was quickly assured that 13 Assassins was imprinted with classic Miike moments. 13 Assassins starts by addressing the villain of the film, Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Gorô Inagaki) who is one nasty sonofabitch. We watch as Naritsugu shoots arrows into an entire family who are bound and lying on the ground. Even the youngest child isn't saved from the flying arrows. We also witness a peasant girl who has had her arms and legs cut off. Even her tongue was removed by the sadistic Naritsugu after her family was massacred. These atrocities propel Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to abandon his Samurai values and he begins to amass a group of warriors that will attempt to ambush Naritsugu and his army of approximately 70 men in a town named Ochlai. His warriors amount to twelve, but when they set out on their mission and inadvertently become lost in the thick jungle, a 13th assassin – a hunter who knows the terrain – joins the band of samurai out to avenge past wrongs and to ensure that Naritsugu doesn't reach the Akashi domain where he is destined to become second in command to The Shogun. The first third of the film deals with Shimada amassing the team and learning of further Naritsugu acts of violence against the people of Japan. But when they samurai set up their ambush in Ochlai, the fun really beings and the final chapters are non-stop action and samurai fighting. 13 Assassins is not only the most accomplished and polished film of Takashi Miike's career, it is also the best film we have watched so far at the Toronto International Film Festival. And judging by the audience's reaction, I was not along in this sediment. The action sequences were relentless and maintained a momentum that The Expendables could only wish for. Every one of the 13 assassins were identifiable and had interesting attributes (the warrior, the loco, the one who uses spears…). The sound that accompanied the action was award worthy. The theatre rocked with explosions and with the sounds of blades cutting flesh and was only drowned out by the consistent audience applause in appreciation. Last year, I picked The Good, The Bad and The Weird to be my favorite film of the year. This year, 13 Assassins stands tall at the top of the list with just a few months to go.