13 Assassins: good guys fight bad guys in a changing world where old traditions and values are redundant

Takashi Miike, “13 Assassins” / “Jusannin no Shikaku” (2010)

Is there a genre of film the prolific director Takashi Miike hasn’t yet touched? Eighty films in twenty years and there is still a film genre that has remained innocent of his style of over-the-top violent melodrama? Amazingly there was until 2010 when he unleashed his homage to the historical samurai epic, “13 Assassins”. As with other films he has made, this remake of a 1963 movie by Eiichi Kudo of the same name straddles the mainstream, the arthouse and the cult underground. The violence which includes lopped heads, two ritual suicides, a quadruple amputee and a scene where a family is pin-cushioned with arrows puts the film firmly in extreme film territory; the beautiful cinematography and a wide range of filming methods anchor the film as an arthouse piece; and the plot’s simple and straightforward narrative of good guys versus bad guys will find favour with a wide audience. If there’s a twist the general public will appreciate, it is that the good guys are rebels and the bad guys are allied with the government of the day.

That day is sometime in 1844 in Tokugawa-period Japan: Lord Naritsugu (Gorou Inagaki), the youngest son of the old Shogun and half-brother to the current Shogun, is set for a promotion in the Shogunate. This worries Lord Doi (Mikijiro Hira) as Naritsugu is a psychopath who rapes and kills at will. After two noblemen and their families are shamed and humiliated by Naritsugu’s outrages, Doi hires an experienced samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to secretly assassinate the young fellow. Shinzaemon hires 12 men to help plan an ambush of Naritsugu while he undertakes his annual trip from Edo to his clan’s estates. The cabal discusses strategy and tactics and decides to trick Naritsugu and his entourage into entering a booby-trapped village. The scheme succeeds as planned but there’s one problem: Naritsugu’s chief samurai Hanbei, suspicious of his old sparring partner Shinzaemon, has summoned extra reinforcements so that instead of fighting 70 men as expected, the 12 assassins plus a hunter called Koyata Kiga discover they have to fight 200 men!

The film is tight and moves smoothly from the first hour during which Shinzaemon’s planning and recruitment take place to the second hour of battle in the village where the assassins have trapped their prey and his warriors. (The version of the film released in Australian cinemas has about 20 minutes cut out.) Though the battle scene is long, clever filming and editing that flits from one assassin to another and one extended battle scene to another ensure that momentum is constant and continues to build to the climax where Shinzaemon confronts Hanbei and Naritsugu alone. Each battle scene shows evidence of careful planning and imagination though the results are gruesome to watch: gates with spikes slam shut and block exits, oil slicks thrown across paths are set alight and a group of bulls similarly aflame (thanks to CGI technology) terrorises the evil lord’s retainers.

Generally the acting is efficient without much depth of characterisation: Naritsugu is quickly established as head villain by his white clothes, his heinous actions against various nobles and a peasant woman, and other characters’ conversations about him. His utterances and further behaviour reveal his contempt for the niceties and hypocrisies of Japanese upper-class society and the code of bushido that governs samurais’ behaviour and actions without exception. The only other characters worthy of mention are Shinzaemon and Hanbei, rivals since their youth and not only in swordplay and oneupmanship: they are rivals in how they interpret duty and loyalty to their masters, which calls into question who their masters are. Are their masters simply their immediate lords, as Hanbei believes? Or are their masters more than their lords and the Shogun himself: are their masters also the people of Japan, their culture and their values – in short, are their masters more than humanity itself? How the old-timers Shinzaemon and Hanbei interpret their code and the values of duty, loyalty and sacrifice makes them highly significant players. Interestingly Naritsugu also becomes more than just a stereotyped villain in a significant and actually quite moving scene where he faces final judgement for his cavalier brutality; the young actor Gorou is impressive in his portrayal of the young lord’s agony.

The depiction of violence is actually tasteful and stylish yet brutal and degrading. The point is made, however bloodily, that violence and death can be very squalid, painful and senseless. The burden of being a samurai, adhering to a code that has become useless in a changing world yet still demands heavy sacrifices of its followers and their families, is underlined in Shinzaemon’s dialogue with his nephew Shinrokuro (Takayuki Yamada) and in a short poignant scene where Shinrokuro leaves his mistress to join his uncle’s crusade.

Ultimately heroes and villains alike meet their fate which in part is predetermined due to their unwavering loyalty to their bushido code. The government of the day doesn’t care much for their OK-corral moment and pretends it never even happened. You wonder whether over 200 men died in vain for a set of values and traditions the government cynically uses to keep society under control. Soon even the government itself is swept aside by the Meiji Restoration. Life goes on.

This is a well-made and handsome-looking film with plenty of drama, excitement and tension. The sense that the time of the samurai and their culture and values is coming to an end gives this epic a poignant edge. There are some downsides to the film: the music is intrusive and not necessary at all, the logistics of 13 men holding off 200 enemies even with the help of explosives and ingenious tactics are implausible, and Miike can’t resist adding his trademark flourishes and black humour. Not a great film to compare with the Kurosawa / Mifune classics but enjoyable to watch.

 

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