Like the original, Miike's remake reflects its time of production while elaborating and exceeding the genre tropes. However, it varies the direction of this deviation in interesting ways compared to the original and to such an extent as to stand on its own. Kudo's film had characters, protagonist and antagonist alike, motivated by bushido. And the late Tokugawa setting established these not as typical giri/ninjo conflicts of the genre, but as largely outdated ethics that turn their proponents into victims of historical and social forces outside of their control.
Miike brings in more of a gender component early on, with Goro Inagaki's Lord Naritsugu engaging in not only rape and child murder, but sexual mutilation and slaughter. This allows Miike to draw in contemporary audiences expecting such spectacle from him instead of talky, jidai-geki set-up. But it also explicitly gives the villain dialogue elaborating his view of bushido - that it is the way of samurai to die for their master, as it is for women to die for their men. This slight element of feminism is largely original to this remake, although it is more present in the second film of Kudo's trilogy - The Great Duel.
Through such explicit violence Miike also establishes more clearly delineated good/bad roles than the original film, to a different end. An innkeeper makes an aside to the effect that in these times, katana are only good for cutting daikon, and he has dozens piled up from losing ronin gamblers to prove it. It is the setting in which ethics have to be codified due to their irrelevance to daily life, as bushido has become a rationale for the sadism for the elite.
The original 13 Assassins by Eiichi Kudo was a reaction to genre convention, like Masaki Kobayashi's Seppuku or Hiroshi Inagaki's Chushingura/Loyal 47 Ronin of the year before. It shares the revolutionary spirit and critical sensibility of Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto and Kenji Misumi. In Miike's iteration, differing concepts of bushido are more explicitly stated as a means to update and simplify the material for contemporary audiences. Our heroes more explicitly shed their identities as the travel towards the final clash, encountering a country bandit played by Yusuke Iseya. He is suspended from a tree as punishment for philandering, and is jokingly referred to as a tanuki. But the character provides meaning through contrast, as Mifune's Kikuchiyo did in 7 Samurai.
Genre convention is played with, but more as a means to provide spectacle, a degree of feminist edge, and an updated film that casts the heroes as on a more current search for identity. Certainly less of a critique and deconstruction of those genre norms so prevalent and still popular at the time of the original film.
The climactic village death trap could also be interestingly contrasted to the finale of Seven Samurai. Director Kudo had Chiezo Kataoka lead the 13 assassins into executing an elaborate series of traps, leading up to his final duel with the villain's equally noble chamberlain played by Ryuhei Uchida. This film has Koji Yakusho doing the same, with the addition of some flaming CGI buffalo.
But whereas in the original, they are not killing one another out of personal malice but necessity, here the lines are clearly drawn and characters are assigned more or less noble deaths according to their virtue. The heroes attack and retreat in guerrilla fashion, but they do not die in quite as desperate and pointless a manner that the ending of the original film drove home. I won't spoil that ending here, I already did that in my spoiler-laden review of that movie.
It is the anti-climactic fashion of key characters' ends that defied cliché genre expectations in the original, and this is largely lost. Although the melee is equally frantic, and arguably even more well choreographed and excitingly shot by modern standards - it serves different and perhaps less pointed ends. By making the killing serve a dramatic point, it loses much of what set the original apart. That sense that hero and villain alike were bought and paid for, a product of their time and made to serve the ends of others.
Miike brings in more of a gender component early on, with Goro Inagaki's Lord Naritsugu engaging in not only rape and child murder, but sexual mutilation and slaughter. This allows Miike to draw in contemporary audiences expecting such spectacle from him instead of talky, jidai-geki set-up. But it also explicitly gives the villain dialogue elaborating his view of bushido - that it is the way of samurai to die for their master, as it is for women to die for their men. This slight element of feminism is largely original to this remake, although it is more present in the second film of Kudo's trilogy - The Great Duel.
Through such explicit violence Miike also establishes more clearly delineated good/bad roles than the original film, to a different end. An innkeeper makes an aside to the effect that in these times, katana are only good for cutting daikon, and he has dozens piled up from losing ronin gamblers to prove it. It is the setting in which ethics have to be codified due to their irrelevance to daily life, as bushido has become a rationale for the sadism for the elite.
The original 13 Assassins by Eiichi Kudo was a reaction to genre convention, like Masaki Kobayashi's Seppuku or Hiroshi Inagaki's Chushingura/Loyal 47 Ronin of the year before. It shares the revolutionary spirit and critical sensibility of Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto and Kenji Misumi. In Miike's iteration, differing concepts of bushido are more explicitly stated as a means to update and simplify the material for contemporary audiences. Our heroes more explicitly shed their identities as the travel towards the final clash, encountering a country bandit played by Yusuke Iseya. He is suspended from a tree as punishment for philandering, and is jokingly referred to as a tanuki. But the character provides meaning through contrast, as Mifune's Kikuchiyo did in 7 Samurai.
Genre convention is played with, but more as a means to provide spectacle, a degree of feminist edge, and an updated film that casts the heroes as on a more current search for identity. Certainly less of a critique and deconstruction of those genre norms so prevalent and still popular at the time of the original film.
The climactic village death trap could also be interestingly contrasted to the finale of Seven Samurai. Director Kudo had Chiezo Kataoka lead the 13 assassins into executing an elaborate series of traps, leading up to his final duel with the villain's equally noble chamberlain played by Ryuhei Uchida. This film has Koji Yakusho doing the same, with the addition of some flaming CGI buffalo.
But whereas in the original, they are not killing one another out of personal malice but necessity, here the lines are clearly drawn and characters are assigned more or less noble deaths according to their virtue. The heroes attack and retreat in guerrilla fashion, but they do not die in quite as desperate and pointless a manner that the ending of the original film drove home. I won't spoil that ending here, I already did that in my spoiler-laden review of that movie.
It is the anti-climactic fashion of key characters' ends that defied cliché genre expectations in the original, and this is largely lost. Although the melee is equally frantic, and arguably even more well choreographed and excitingly shot by modern standards - it serves different and perhaps less pointed ends. By making the killing serve a dramatic point, it loses much of what set the original apart. That sense that hero and villain alike were bought and paid for, a product of their time and made to serve the ends of others.