Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins"

There is nothing unexpected about Takashi Miike's epic samurai bloodbath, "13 Assassins." It is a conventional action film from a highly unconventional, prolific director who relishes in the beautification of sensational gore.Yet, it's incredibly captivating at both an emotionally visceral and intellectually historical level.

That the film delivers on every level of an action epic is usually a cliched disappointment when it comes to modern films. It's the fact that Takashi Miike, a director of 70 plus productions, challenged his indulgently bizarre perversions within the limits of cinematic traditionalism. It's a tradition that largely began with Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai." "13 Assassins" is a remake of another Samurai film from Kurosawa contemporary, Eiichi Kudo. While Kurosawa by no means invented the Samurai film, his "Seven Samurai" created expectations of what they should be. It undoubtedly influenced Kudo's film, which was released nearly 10 years later.

Kurosawa is known for having pioneered the now common plot device of assembling a team of heroes against inconceivable odds. In the case of "13 Assassins" it is 12 assassins and 1 odd-ball who will take on an army. Like "Seven Samurai" there is always one loose cannon that provides both comic relief and a triumph of the unexpected.

"13 Assassins" also carries all the trademarks of honorable death, dizzying swordplay, existential melancholy of life lived by the blade and a commoner's resentment of samurai arrogance. These themes are dutifully explored by Miike as homage to not only "Seven Samurai," but films like "Harakiri" and "Sword of Doom."

Takashi Miike hits action high notes with his chorus of actors like a polar opposite to Sylvester Stallone's disharmony in attempting to re-excite action with "The Expendables." In "13 Assassins" we are set-up with character motivations to riveting, graphic effect, in the first 20 minutes. We get about another half hour of assembling samurais in preparation. The remaining hour of film is a bloodbath of hell-bent warriors who dismantle an army, one rolling head at a time.

It's gratuitously excessive in its unreal battle gore, but completely invigorating thanks to Miike's virtuosity as a director. The cinematography conveys a great deal of communicative action within a dynamic 13 heroes engaged in close combat. Again, there is nothing unexpected, yet somehow Miike takes us down this samurai path with surprising freshness. "13 Assassins" take places within feudal Japan at the end of the Samurai age, which redundantly explores the decline of the warrior's honor. It's a suicide mission enticing reluctant heroes into action and there's no question that the final confrontation will reveal the senselessness of violence, no matter if the good guys win.

If you love the rigid mystique of the Samurai's code, exquisitely choreographed battle sequences and can stomach a maelstrom of blood, "13 Assassins" nails it. In many ways "13 Assassins" embodies everything that "Seven Samurai" delivered for it's time, but with a relentless appetite for destruction. For today's students of cinema who have seen it all, a film like "Seven Samurai" is great within the context of appreciation. Takashi Miike summoned Kurosawa's spirit to remind us of cinema's epic ambitions while still wielding a sword atop a galloping horse.