13 Assassins

"Total massacre"

Before seeing 13 Assassins my only experience of a Takashi Miike film was watching the first half of Audition - you know, the boring half - and turning it off because it was, well, boring.  So when it was suggested to me that I watch 13 Assassins I was concerned not only by the 2+ hours (ok, only +6 minutes) running time, but the information coming my way that almost half of that, if not more, was given over to a battle sequence.  An hour?  Of Samurai fighting?  I must admit, I was not under the impression that this was going to be my thing....

How wrong I was.  How very wrong.

13 Assassins is an epic of Shakespearean proportions.  All stilted, polite conversation - even when debating how to go about taking out the enemy - dark rooms and darker deeds, good vs. evil, all on the most humanistic of levels.
Admittedly the film takes a while to really get going but, as with Audition if I'd stuck with it, the slow build leads to an immense climax.  But even before the battle Miike has you on the edge of your seat.  He walks the line between the gruesome and the subtle very well; there is evidence of torture in a scene which shifts the film into 'horror' terrain and a brief but brilliant moment later in which it rains blood.  But even in the battle scenes are not all about the gore.  The sequences are choreographed and shot with great invention (did I mention the raining blood?) with each of the assassins featured in their own fights against seemingly undiminishing numbers of aggressors yet without it feeling episodic.
Miike also focuses on the characters enough for each personality to come through, especially during the trek through the mountain forest, lightening the mood brilliantly through Yûsuke Iseya's joyously wild-eyed performance.  Masataka Kubota (Ogura) is also one of the highlights as an inexperienced Samurai.

So it turns out this was indeed my thing.  I'll be looking up more of Miike's work in the future and preparing for one hell of a ride.

Epic in the most glorious of ways.  So full of detail it's probably worth another 10 watches - 9/10