Review of 13 Assassins (2010) by Lewis E — 11 Sep 2013

In a nutshell, 13 samurai join together in a suicide mission to defy law and murder an evil Lord who is protected by a large samurai clan. Not uncommon in Asian Cinema, most of the dialogue consists of speaking about honour, moral code and their duty as a samurai. Add this to the fact that it is subtitles and then you have a significant number of people who are going to stay clear of this. For everyone else, this is very good.

The structure is unique, spending the first hour building a picture of why this Lord has to be taken out and assembling the skilled warriors worthy of achieving such task before having the last hour completely dedicated to the massive battle. Initially, I thought a few of the beginning scenes were a bit tedious, particularly annoying when one of the characters flirted with the idea of a fight before the other samurai declined. However, showing next to no combat until the end was a good decision, working in its favour through making the audience yearn for it more, thus enhancing the power of the movie's second half. The final battle was done in style with a decent display of sword fighting making it a sufficient bloodfest. There are some great moments in the final scenes, which I won't spoil, but I'll say it was no surprise that some of the Lord's men was losing their heads by the end of it (literally in most cases).

My only, teeny, tiny criticism would be that more of the vile Lord's antics could have been shown. They certainly show enough to make you truly despise this man but going into more detail into his upbringing or his methods of ruling his clan could have raised this by half a star. Deeper character development could have been explored in regards to some of the lesser known members of the assassins, understandably though this could have taken up too much time since there was 13 of them.

In my experience, Asian films are know for never holding back and this is no exception. It is difficult for a film to produce the wow factor when the ending is more or less known but here is an example of how it can be done.