Review of 13 Assassins (2010) by Tal G — 08 Apr 2018

Well that was comfy for what it was.

A pretty simple and well choreographed samurai action movie set in the end days of old Japan.

Basically, there's a very simple premise half set up through some exposition text slides at the very beginning, and the other half through some "I'm putting together a team" scenes.

It was made well enough. The costumes and sets felt authentic, although not perfect. Some of the makeup was a bit off. Mostly some helmets and the top knot wigs that were really noticeable at times. Some pretty basic usage of very rudimentary CGI here and there. The worst CGI was definitely with the burning bulls. Kinda pulled me out of the experience. The cinematography was very dry and simple. The music was just generic.

The characters were actually too underdeveloped for the most part. Maybe the main 3 or 4 characters got some semblance of characterization, but all the rest were left a bit too paper thin. I think there was definitely more that could've been done to flesh them out and to make the viewers care more about them. When you make a movie based on a team that dies off one by one under dire circumstances, it will work better if we actually care about who dies. And in this case more differentiation would also help a lot. Too many of the assassins were just a name with a sword.

The acting is a bit hard to judge, since it's a rather stylized Japanese period piece, but I'm pretty certain some of the acting was way off, even despite the culture barrier that's inherent with a non-Japanese viewer like me.

There was also a very weird tonal hiccup square in the middle of the movie where the immortal idiot basically anally rapes a mayor after the mayor oggles his dick..? It was supposed to be a comic relief moment, but.. What?? There was nothing similar to this at any other point in the movie. That was just bad. Totally fucked with the overall quality of the movie, as did the immortal idiot himself.

The best part about this movie was definitely the great samurai action. Really well choreographed. Steady, visible action. Very visceral, animalistic, desperate. It also felt like it lasted longer than any of the other aspects of the movie. It could've probably been shortened a bit in favor of stronger characterizations and set up for a more dramatic and explosive final execution. But I have to admit that when this movie worked, it was an engrossing and watchable experience. The atmosphere was maintained well besides those weird points I mentioned.

The ending seemed to linger for way too long after the final climax. It just felt like more precious time that could've been used to create better characters.

It's like this movie started off by appearing to be serious and dramatic, but then just turned into a schlocky samurai chaos movie. If that was the goal, then well done. If not, then a lot could've been done to make it into that serious and impressive movie. A more cohesive and, in the end, a better movie.