James R | On 01, Aug 2014

Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Kôji Yakusho, Yûsuke Iseya Iseya, Gorô Inagaki, Arata Furuta
Certificate: 15

It takes a certain type of director to even dream of taking on Seven Samurai, but legendary director Takashi Miike has the balls to do it. The kind of balls – or, more accurately, bulls – that run around 19th-century Japan causing chaos.

1844. It’s an era of peace, which means that samurai are drifting about with no battles to fight or values to uphold. So when the chance comes to defend some honour and die a noble death, Shinzaemon (Yakusho) can’t wait to do his thing. And so he sets about assembling a team of 13 men to take out the corrupt, depraved second-in-line to the Shogun throne.

As Shinza scurries about to find his soldiers, the whopping cast of characters gets a little much. But the film never drags, even when it seems to descend into a long string of name-dropping. The ensemble is made up of stereotypes (the wise one, the stupid amateur, the young one who’s never killed before) but Miike conjures up tension in other ways. One gruesome, harrowing moment reminds us beyond any doubt that Lord Naritsugu is a Bad Man with a reckoning undoubtedly headed his way.

Which is great for Miike, because he’s busy building up to an epic showdown in a village rigged for ambush: 45 minutes of complete and utter carnage. Traps go boom, houses go bang – it’s like a feudal version of Home Alone. If Kevin McCallister used a herd of bulls to trample through a Japanese army.

And yet 13 Assassins is almost restrained compared to Takashi’s earlier work; this is tighter and more mature than Ichi the Killer ever was. At one point the youthful hunter who joins in the brawl challenges the arrogant warriors. “You’re not even a samurai!” decries one. “So what?” comes the reply. You can’t argue with that kind of energy.

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