13 Assassins

13 Assassins
File:Thirteen Assassins.jpg Japanese film poster
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Produced by	Toshiaki Nakazawa Jeremy Thomas Takashi Hirajō
Screenplay by	Daisuke Tengan
Story by	Shōichirō Ikemiya
Starring	Kōji Yakusho Takayuki Yamada Yūsuke Iseya Ikki Sawamura Hiroki Matsukata Matsumoto Kōshirō IX Gorō Inagaki Masachika Ichimura
Music by	Kōji Endō
Cinematography	Nobuyasu Kita
Edited by	Kenji Yamashita
Production company	Sedic International RPC Toho
Distributed by	Toho (Japan) Artificial Eye (UK)
Release dates	25 September 2010 (2010-09-25) (Japan) 6 May 2011 (2011-05-06) (United Kingdom)
Running time	125 minutes
Country	Japan United Kingdom
Language	Japanese
Budget	$6 million
Box office	$17,054,213

13 Assassins (Japanese: 十三人の刺客, romaji: Jūsannin no Shikaku) is a 2010 Japanese jidaigeki (period drama) film directed by Takashi Miike. The screenplay was written by Daisuke Tengan. The film is a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 black-and-white Japanese film of the same name, Jûsan-nin no shikaku. A samurai epic with a loose historical basis, the film was produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa, who also produced the 2009 winner of Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Departures.

The film stars Koji Yakusho, whose credits include Memoirs of a Geisha and Shall We Dance, along with Takayuki Yamada, Sōsuke Takaoka, Hiroki Matsukata, and Kazuki Namioka. It is the third film in which Yamada and Takaoka co-starred, the first two being Crows Zero and Crows Zero 2, both directed by Miike. It was nominated for Best Film at the 34th Japan Academy Prize.

Plot

In the 1840s, Japan, as the Tokugawa Shogunate faces extinction, a corrupt lord named Matsudaira Naritsugu of Akashi freely rapes, tortures, and murders his own citizens. He is protected because the Shogun is his half-brother. However, the Justice Minister realizes the threat he poses if Naritsugu should further ascend, and hires a trusted older Samurai, Shinzaemon, to ambush and murder Naritsugu. Unfortunately, the conversation is overheard by the Samurai Hanbei, a childhood friend of Shinzaemon who has persisted in loyalty toward Naritsugu.

Shinzaemon gathers 11 more Samurai to be his Assassins, among them his own nephew Shinroukuro, and comes up with the plan of ambushing Naritsugu on his official journey from Edo back to Akashi. With the legal authority and financial assistance of the Justice Minister, the Assassins empty out the small town of Ochiai and builds numerous traps and fortifications inside of it. Meanwhile, a minor lord whose daughter-in-law was raped and whose only son was murdered by Naritsugu obstructs the official highway, guaranteeing that Naritsugu must travel the Ochiai route.

Around this time, the Assassins are on the road when they are ambushed by Ronins paid off by Hanbei. They travel through the mountains for cover but get lost in the forests. In the process they encounter a hunter named Kiga Koyata, who guides them out of the forest and is adopted by them as the 13th Assassin.

When Naritsugu arrives to Ochiai, it is discovered that he has been reinforced. Instead of facing 70 soldiers, the Assassins must fight through 200. A lengthy battle follows with Naritsugu and the soldiers becoming boxed inside that village, and straightaway being assaulted with arrows, gunpowder, spears, and swords, along with Koyata who slings rocks. Naritsugu thinks that the carnage is entertaining, telling Hanbei that upon becoming counsel to the Shogun he shall bring back the civil wars of the Sengoku period.

One by one the Assassins are killed, but not before they inflict heavy casualties on the Naritsugu's force. Naritsugu and Hanbei manage to run out of the village, but are cornered by Shinzaemon and Shinrokuro. After Shinzaemon kills Hanbei, Naritsugu and Shinzaemon mortally wound each other, the latter purposely being wounded so he can die a soldier's death rather than of old age.

The battle being over, Shinrokuro wanders through the wreckage and piled up bodies. He meets Koyata, who was stabbed in the neck by Naritsugu but somehow became healed. An epilogue states that in 1844 May, the Shogun and his government covered up what really happened, announcing that Naritsugu died on that journey from illness. Twenty-three years later, the Tokugawa Shogunate would be overthrown in favor of the Meiji Restoration.

The 13 assassins

(Character names follow the pattern of Japanese names, with the family surname placed first)

• Shimada Shinzaemon (Kōji Yakusho) – The leader of the group, a war weary, decorated samurai who believes that there is more to Bushido than blind obedience. Having believed that there was no chance for an honorable death, he is deeply elated when hired to carry out the mission. He is the 11th and final one to die during the battle.
• Kuranaga Saheita (Hiroki Matsukata) – Second in command to Shinzaemon, another veteran samurai who volunteers his best and most trusted students to join the group. He is the 9th to die after all of his students, he finally succumbs to his wounds as the town burns down around him and begins to fall apart.
• Hioki Yasokichi (Sōsuke Takaoka) – A highly skilled samurai from Kuranaga's dojo, he is the 1st to die, by his wounds after getting speared.
• Ōtake Mosuke (Seiji Rokkaku) – A plump-faced samurai with a jovial demeanor, but remains a tenacious fighter. He is the 3rd to die after watching Ishizuka die, though his death is not seen on screen.
• Horii Yahachi (Kōen Kondō) – A skilled samurai from Kuranaga's dojo who trained with Gennai in the use of explosives. He is the 5th to die after blowing himself up.
• Higuchi Gennai (Yūma Ishigaki) – Horii's demolition partner, a tough and skilled samurai who trained with Yahachi in the use of explosives. He Is the 6th to die after numerous wounds.
• Mitsuhashi Gunjirō (Ikki Sawamura) – Another samurai from Kuranaga's dojo who prepares Ochiai to trap their victim. He is the 4th to die while making a last stand.
• Hirayama Kujūrō (Tsuyoshi Ihara) – A ronin of unmatched swordsmanship, who trained under Shinzaemon. He is the 8th to die while fighting with literally every object he has in hand in front of his student.
• Ogura Shōujirō (Masataka Kubota) – A young samurai disciple of Hirayama, untested in battle but with unwavering devotion and skills to match. He is the 7th to die while watching his master fight.
• Shimada Shinrokurō (Takayuki Yamada) – Shinzaemon's nephew, he has strayed from Bushido to become a gambler and a womanizer. Bored and ashamed, he joins the mission to redeem himself. A deleted scene at the end shows him returning home to his wife.
• Ishizuka Rihei (Kazuki Namioka) – A skilled and courageous samurai who joined the mission with Sahara. He is the 2nd to die, from his wounds in front of Otake.
• Sahara Heizō (Arata Furuta) – An elder ronin, battle scarred and hardened, who favors the yari (spear) over the katana (sword). He is the 10th to die shortly after his spear breaks. Like Otake his death is off screen.
• Kiga Koyata (Yūsuke Iseya) – A hunter who is found suspended in a cage in the forest as a punishment for seducing his boss's wife and aids the assassins in finding a route to Ochiai as well as in combating the enemy samurai. He appears to die after being stabbed through the throat by Naritsugu's sword. After the battle, he appears to Shinrokuro unharmed. It is suggested that he is a goblin, or yōkai, in human form.

Production

The film was produced through Nakazawa's entity Sedic International and Thomas' Recorded Picture Company. Nakazawa had previously worked with Miike on Sukiyaki Western Django, both Young Thugs movies, Andromedia, Yakuza Demon, and The Bird People in China.

Principal photography began in July 2009 on a large open-air set in Tsuruoka in the Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan. On the advent of production, Thomas said he was pleased to be again working with "wonderful Japanese filmmakers like Toshiaki Nakazawa and Takashi Miike, whose work speaks for itself as being amongst the most successful and innovative coming from Japan." Nakazawa replied that he would like Thomas "to wear a sword also, and with one more assassin, together we will send out the fourteen assassins over there." The film wrapped in September 2009.

Release

Thomas' London-based company HanWay Films is handling international sales, and launched the film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Toho had prebought the rights to distribute the film in Japan. The film competed for the Golden Lion at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

The film was released on VOD, and subsequently DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the United States on 5 July 2011 by Magnet Releasing, an arm of Magnolia.

Reception

The film 13 Assassins met with positive reviews with an aggregate score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and a summary of "Takashi Miike's electric remake of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 period action film is a wild spectacle executed with killer, dizzying panache". Film critic Roger Ebert described the film as "terrifically entertaining, an ambitious big-budget epic, directed with great visuals and sound" and compared it favorably to other action films in its subtle use of CGI effects. Ebert also praised the way the film "focuses on story in the midst of violence", incorporating characters and drama with a skill that most blockbuster action films lack. Ebert later included it in his "Best Films of 2011" list as an addendum to his top 20.

In 2014, Time Out polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films. 13 Assassins was listed at 94th place on this list.

External links

• Official website for US
• 13 Assassins at IMDb
• 13 Assassins at Rotten Tomatoes
• 13 Assassins at Metacritic