Just caught a special screening of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins.

With a genre that's not exactly drawing a lot of audiences (with Yamada's Love & Honor being the last hit of such), the samurai film is back with magnificent vengeance with Miike's take on 13 Assassins. Possibly one of his most polished and confident works, the director may also disappoint his ardent fans as he foregoes any of the eccentricities displayed in his past works. Miike plays 13 Assassins straight-forward (save for one grotesque scene which is one of the catalyst for the plot). He casts the film with well-known character actors of the Japanese movie industry such as Koji Yakusho (Babel), Takayuki Yamada (Crows Zero), Yusuke Isaya (Casshern), Goro Inagaki (one of the members of SMAP) & Tsuyoshi Ihara (Letters fm Iwo Jima).

If one were to watch this film without knowing the director's reputation, you'd think it was directed by someone greatly inspired by the works of Kihachi Okamoto's Sword of Doom, Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri or, if I dare say it, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. The main theme, which is vengeance, also heavily questions the merits of being a samurai and its caste system during those times.

The plot is quite simple...a high-ranking young official of the Shogunate displays absolute brutality (believe me when I say brutal!!) towards his servants & constituents. Because of this, one of the senior Shogunate members has had enough of the abuse and hires a swordsman to come up with a team of ronin to assassinate the kid.

What most people may ask, "What about the action?" Well, within its 2 hour runtime, 1 hr & 15 is the buildup to the almost 45 minute of NON-STOP action filled with heads lopped off, limbs severed & blood gushes (though none of the over-the-top Lone Wolf & Cub-type). The swordplay and battle scenes are very well done, not choppily-edited, with the sound effects intentionally amped up for maximum experience.

I highly recommend 13 Assassins, and as a huge fan of this particular genre, I can attest that this movie belongs to the list of one of the best samurai films ever made.

I've been wanting to see this since I first read about. My excitement comes from not only my love of the genre but that it is suppose to be a huge departure for Miike, as your post supports, so I hope it gets a good region free Blu-Ray release.

New Miike. I'm in.

His movies totally take me out of my element - just like most of Terry Gilliam's. The perception of reality feels a little off after I watch them.

Miike has been straightforward before, but those movies usually don't see the light of day in America because they're less marketable than his excursions into the bizarre and grotesque. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited for this one.

I'll be checking this out.

Thanks for the heads up OP.

This film is a remake of the first film in Director Eiichi Kudo's Samurai Revolution trilogy from the mid-1960's. The original films - all quite similar - were very, very good and I would slot them on a tier just below the often proclaimed best of the genre - HARAKIRI, SAMURAI REBELLION, and SEVEN SAMURAI. Eiichi Kudo's original trilogy could certainly be described as mixture of Kobayashi thematically blended with Kurosawa action. From Cardiac161's description it sounds as if they kept it simple aka "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", in which case this remake really should be a tremendous film.

I hope to see it soon

Magnet has the US rights and plans to release it in theaters in early 2011.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/mag...ntent=Twitter#

I can't wait to see this. It won't be in any theater remotely near me, but hopefully it'll be on demand or maybe even since it's Magnolia, HDNet might show it.

I think an HDNet showing might be likely, and I'd def be sure to record it.

This was fantastic!

Wow, I couldn't have enjoyed it more. Easily Miike's best work.

Besides 'When the Last Sword is Drawn' and Kitano's 'Zatoichi', proper chanbara are rare lately. Miike gets it right in this one on all fronts.

On Amazon's VOD service for 9.99 right now, thinking about purchasing it

Yep. HDNet Movies has it set to debut on April 27th.

Better than The Bird People In China, Dead or Alive 2, and Audition?

Yes. For me it was by a good margin. This was totally legit chanbara done right, done damn near perfect in fact, in all the important areas. I absolutely loved it.

My favorite film of his was 'Izo' up until this. I totally got what he was doing there unlike 99% of people who saw it, apparently.

Interesting. I love Miike in general, but I think his best are Bird People, DoA2, and Ichi The Killer. I'd have checked out 13 Assassins anyway, but now it's at the top of my list.

I would sure love to catch this in a theater. I'm excited about this one. I love Samurai movies, and this one sounds like a very, very good one.

This plays at the Dallas International Film Festival this week, I'm seeing it tomorrow.

oh shit. I need to see it and I live so close too...just so busy w/ papers that I've failed to keep updated on this.

It is good but lower your expectations on the end action. I think my expectations were too high but I did enjoy it. I love samurai movies and I am fascinated with their culture.

For the people who've seen this, did you seen the international version or the uncut film? I believe I read that the international cut is 15 minutes shorter.

I thought it was pretty good. I haven't seen many samurai movies, but I'd guess this is a good one as far as they go.

Just a reminder that this is on HDNet tonight

I DVR'd it, I'll watch it this weekend.

Just for the record, American Blu-ray and Japanese Blu-ray are the same region. Japanese Blu-rays play on American players.

and you can hope that the JP BD has subtitles on some of those features.