Aleksandar Sarkic For the long time these movie was on my watch-list, many people suggested, and i have seen many good reviews about it, and as a big fan of Samurai cinema and Japanese cinema as a whole these was somehow natural to be on my watch-list. And finally i had opportunity to watch it, and i was generally disappointed. It was really ridiculous to compare 13 Assassins with such classics as Yojimbo and 7 Samurai. 13 Assassins miss something it miss mostly atmosphere, fist hour of the movie is very similar with 7 samurai, the main samurai is gathering other samurai for the task, and their strategy how to get and kill evil lord, and next hour is just action packed, i never seen so much action in some samurai movie like in these one, it is very cartoonish and reminds me on some manga and anime stuff for the kids, 13 assassins are battling the army of 200 people, but it looks to me at the end like they killed one thousand of them or even more. Experience was like playing some beat em up game with good graphics. It is worth mentioning the great acting by the main actor in these movie Koji Yakusho. His acting reminded me on such legends as Toshiro Mifune, also reminder of a cast was really good. Because of that and some other solid moments in the movie i gave 5/10. These is great movie to watch if you want fun for one afternoon, but nothing more.

Brandon Robert Gallemore I just finished this movie last night. I really loved the film for what it's purpose was, a classic action movie. The beginning is very similar to how many movies of this genre begin. They find the few men who are willing to fight for what they believe in, and then they go fight in an impossible situation. The movie really takes off when you learn about the young man who is the brother of the current Shogun and the next in line for the throne. This man is supremely evil. He kills a newly married couple after defiling the young bride, and he also slept with a woman only after cutting off all of her limbs. This man is wreaking havoc on the nation at this point in the story. Our main character is approached by the elders in his village and is asked to stop the Shogun's brother, and the only way to do it is by killing him. The protagonist gathers his initial 12 men and sets off to kill the second-in-command. Along the way the men get lost in the mountains and stumble across a young Japanese man. This man is not a Samurai, but has extensive knowledge of the surrounding area. He joins the twelve, leaving us with the final thirteen men. When they finally reached their destination they decide to set the trap. The Shogun's brother ends up with a small unit of about 200 men, but heavily outnumbers our heroes. The initial traps were awesome, all except for the bulls that the men set loose only after setting them on fire. I really hated this part of the movie because you can clearly tell that is was CGI. The terrible animation of these running bulls really detracted from the story. The whole rest of the movie looks really natural and has some really great shots. This was really the only negative for me. I think when people watch this in twenty years, that scene will stick out like a sore thumb. Finally, the ending. Ten of the men initially die and we are at the final sequence with the protagonist and his nephew. They are face- to- face with the Shogun's brother and his commander with two guardsmen. The guardsmen are killed pretty quickly and so is the commander. The protagonist and antagonist face off for a split second and you think the bad guy wins. He sticks his sword into our main character, but that is quickly reciprocated. The heir-apparent thanks the men and tells them that it was the best day of his life. Our protagonist dies and we are left with his nephew and the mountain man who appears at the very end of the movie. Altogether, it was a great film. It was very reminiscent of Seven Samurai and I think they even drew a bit of inspiration from that film. I highly recommend this for anyone who loves action movies. Enjoy!

anuraagt It's histrionic and overwrought, and hard to believe if you don't buy it's premise of duty and conflict, set in Miike's beautiful and masterful style. But if you do allow Miike's unabashedly sympathetic portrayal of feudal Japan and the caste system of the Samurai to appeal to you, then this is an epic. It's also a positing of the modern Japanese questioning of the purpose of duty, of values trumping allegiance to a static system, and interestingly Miike doesn't have a neatly gift-wrapped answer in this film to Western observers who are curious about where modern Japanese identity is headed. So it's great fodder for dinner conversations!The pathos of the victims of the villain, the absurd and gory violence that Miike relishes and makes you sit through throughout the movie, the beauty of rural Japan, and his punctilious attention to beautiful traditional costume and architecture are all just wonderful elements of this film. Anybody can enjoy this movie, and walk away from it with a very rich aesthetic sense of Japanese feudal history. And so I think as a viewer you have to congratulate the director for making something which feels commercial and big budget and paced and crisply edited, and yet captures moments of ambiguity and moral complexity that make the experience of watching it very compelling.

throbert Some of the reviewers compare this movie to the Seven Samurai of Kurosawa, but I don't know what movie they were watching. Yeah, like comparing Apocalypse Now to Kickboxer 4. Kurosawa's masterwork had a plot in this universe, a continuous plot that had logical elements built on top of each other. The 13 Assassin is a lot less convincing movie with serious logical glitches and holes. Is it a part of some post- postmodern reading that I didn't get? What is the point of someone dead being revived just add some stupid sentences into his mouth? The Lazarus coming back had his throat cut some 20 minutes earlier... This movie had everything subjugated (logic, reality) so that it could show scenes the director held important. The ending scene, the flowing blood from the rooftop out of nothing, not killing the prince because he has to be left last so we can have the "great revenge scene", all this is a part of a great fan-service. I'm still waiting for the review that explains all this and maybe I'll see the movie with a different eye, but sadly most of our reviewers rejoice the gore and the action, saying this is a masterpiece and caring not about plot continuity or logic.