Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is set in the middle of the 19th century, as the age of the samurai became unsustainable, and the clash of its values with those of modern politics rendered the former more quaint than noble. Of course, these values were always at least as mythologic as real, but Miike offers a fresh take on the familiar theme of competing notions of duty: service to authority versus honor in the face of the immorality of those in authority. The film opens with a graphic, yet almost bloodless, act of harakiri. The camera lingers on the man’s face, but the sound of the blade tearing at his insides is powerfully gruesome. The story follows a band of samurai who take it upon themselves to assassinate the half-brother of the Shogun, a man whose careless brutality threatens the entire social order. Much of the film is taken up with the recruitment of the assassins, and their own internal moral debates, but the final 35 minutes is a tour de force of swordplay. The 13 take on close to 200 retainers without the noticeable help of CGI. The quiet dignity of the samurai, as they face near certain death in their quest to rid Japan of a madman, is hardly original to the genre, but somehow it works here. I have often found Miike to go way over the top in his films, for my taste at least, but he gets this one just right.
A quick word about the previews on the DVD for 13 Assassins. There was Hobo with a Shotgun, starring Rutger Hauer in the title role, an extraordinary movie called Rubber, about a killer tire (yes, the thing you put on the wheels of your car), and a bizarre and macabre horror flick starring David Hyde Pierce and entitled Perfect Host. Watching these was like being invited to an evening of grindhouse with Quentin Tarantino.
13 Assassins is on deck for tonight. In addition to Rammbock, I watched Hobo last night. A more loving recreation of various late-’70s/early-’80s horror tropes could not be found: vicious punks on the rampage, society broken down and ruled by crime, thunderdomish hijinks. Many heads, hands, and feet are smashed to pulp. Rutger Hauer is a weary delight: he plays this sincerely, in a way, or rather underplays–instead of going for the bleachers, he lets his frequent close-ups bring the performance into the eyes. Let’s not overstate: he is, after all, a hobo with a shotgun. But I was impressed by his work, and by the director’s facility in situating such a performance in a more outre film….
I also loved the look — more garish primary colors than Dick Tracy.
On the drive to soccer practice yesterday evening, I felt the need to inform my 14 year old and his team-mates of Rutger Hauer’s storied movie career, from Bladerunner, to the Hitcher, to Wanted: Dead or Alive, to Buffy. Now that is versatility! Hobo is right now winging its way to me on Netflix.
I misread Reynolds’ last line of his comment. I thought he wrote, “I also loved the book.” And I got briefly excited that Hobo was based on the classic novel of the same name.
who would have thought that miike would make a movie i could watch all the way through without having to look away? i watched this on netflix streaming last night and quite enjoyed it. i haven’t seen seven samurai in ages so couldn’t figure out a relationship, and in general i wasn’t sure if the film was trying to be anything more than a samurai action movie. a specific thing that i didn’t understand: the hunter/thief who joins them in the forest: he gets a sword through the neck and seems to die. then he pops up at the end, none the worse for wear, and skips off into the sunset. does this signal that there’s been a break in the seeming realism? that, in fact, they all died before getting the lord and miike’s just been letting the audience get their genre desires? someone explain this to me.
So you skipped over I Saw the Devil?
He was MAGIC.
At the end of an earlier film, also a generally realist set-up, a detective’s amputated fingers grow back. I think Miike just seems to delight in the strange game, even when he’s playing most straight….
i think i may make sunhee watch i saw the devil first.
i read on wikipedia that the hunter character in 13 assassins may be a benign mountain demon from japanese folklore. hence apparently the bizarre flashback of his lover upashi doing disgusting things in a pond.
i preferred when i thought he was just a rural bad-ass who could beat samurais at their game, and i also liked when it seemed miike had offed him rather than have him do a “what fools these samurai be” routine at the end.
this is apparently a remake–if netflix has the original i may try to watch it.
I found I Saw the Devil–which I don’t think has its own thread here–to be both grueling and thoroughly engrossing. It took me some time to realize just what was driving Soo-hyun; he’s overwhelmed by the guilt he feels for not being around to save his wife from being murdered by the murderous psychopath Kyung-chul. To deal with this guilt, he–and I can’t think of any other word here–enables similar attacks in order to do what he could not do with his wife: arrive on the scene in the nick of time and punish–but not kill or arrest–Kyung-chul.
And, by the way, Min-sik Choi’s performance as Kyung-chul was brilliant. I’m quite impressed that he was able to portray a homicidal maniac who can look another homicidal maniac in the eye and say, with believable contempt, “you’re a sick fucker.”
finding nemo made me cry.
Cast Away made me cry.
Wilson! Wilson!!!
in the deleted scenes you see him get over it in the volleyball section of a memphis sports chalet.
I saw the same delights in I Saw, John, and there were moments of just devastatingly well-crafted tension. I was always leaning forward. That said, and this isn’t entirely a snipe, its puzzlebox entrapment of characters (and viewers) seemed to rely upon ante-upping chutzpah more than narrative momentum. Oh, you thought things were bad, vicious, nihilistic? Hang on a second, I’ve got something to show you. (The writer of this wrote another film–The Unjust–which I enjoyed as well, and I strongly encourage folks to find that, too.)
I have to admit that the achilles tendon scene was very hard for me to watch.
mike, so you liked it on the whole? when i asked sunhee if she’d watch it last night, she said she could but you’d said it was terrible.
a scene very hard for mike to watch? then i’m out.
No–not terrible. I probably appreciated it more than liked it, and I was sort of let down after loving The Good The Bad The Weird. It is pretty nasty stuff…I might have said it wasn’t worth the effort. I don’t think it holds together all that well–The Chaser and The Unjust have a similar, slickly-nasty tone, but work better. There’s some great setpieces, though.
Hobo With a Shotgun is now “watch instantly” on Netflix. ‘Tis in my queue.
the students at my school are really loving this movie . . . I can’t tell you how many kids have encouraged me to see it. I’ve never been much of a samurai guy, but I should probably give it a go via Netflix.