20 Reasons Why You Rock: 13 Assassins
There are a select number of movies that I watch a few times a year just to remind myself of how awesome they are. 13 Assassins is one of those movies. It has so many of the things that I love in samurai films but also buckets and buckets of blood. Director Takashi Miike is a legend and his recent historical films have knocked it out of the park. If you haven’t seen 13 Assassins then you need to rectify that (dubbed version on Tubi) and then come back and see if you agree with these 20 Reasons Why You Rock!
#1. In true Miike fashion, there is a graphic scene before the credits even roll. Not sexual this time, but we get a clear sound of a man stabbing himself through the guts. Brutal stuff.
#2. The movie takes its time with the main players. The big bad is super bad. We know it because we hear about it and we see it. The good guy assassins all get some sort of introduction and it’s mostly about their honor and duty to die in combat.
#3. One of the things about this movie that you should know is that it takes place in the mid 1800’s as the samurai period was ending. Things were a little weird as the country transitioned and many of the samurai were left hanging around getting drunk and wishing they were at war.
#4. It’s not quite a training montage but it’s a good training sequence. They fight with swords and bare hands. They play around with explosives which we all assume will come into play later.
#5. The fact that Shinzaemon and the right hand man of the bad guy are former boys is the best. The scenes that follow with the two are expert stuff.
#6. The ronin attack is a nice little taste of the chaos that is to come. Most of the action in the film is in the final act so it’s good to get that taste.
#7. The mountain man bug eater was always my least favorite part of the movie. It feels out of place until he turns into a killer among men.
#8. There was somewhere around 20 minutes of screentime cut from the film for the American version. Apparently, it mentioned how Kiga wasn’t really a human after all. He was some sort of demon dude or something. It’s probably a good thing they left that out.
#9. It’s such an excellent scene when they block passage at the bridge and then the dude kills himself. True samurai shit and it is also very telling about the skills of planning on Shinzaemon’s part.
#10.If you are going to set up an ambush in a small town then you might as well call it the “Town of Death”.
#11. Not only do they turn the town in a very defensible place, but it also looks awesome with all the arrows on the roofs and walls built all around.
#12. Three words; flaming water buffalos.
#13. One of my favorite visuals from the film has to be the alleyway full of swords. Naritsugu and his people almost shit their pants when they see it.
#14. Right on cue, the assassins blow up some dynamite and take out a bunch of the men guarding the Lord. What follows can best be described as a liquid blast of blood from the upper levels of the building.
#15. The final battle is too epic to even put into words. Nothing would ever make me believe that 13 men could take on this amount of dudes but this film does its best to make it seem plausible.
#16. I mentioned it before but Naritsugu really is the perfect villain because he never learns a lesson. He somehow gets worse as the film goes on and by the end is fully on board with just starting needless wars only to see the destruction they cause.
#17. The final showdown between Hanbei and Shinzaemon is very cool. As former classmastes they were intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses and it’s only when Shinzaemon goes outside the bounds of dojo fighting that he gains the upper hand. This ain’t no dojo, bitch!
#18. I think Shinzaemon said it best when he said being a samurai is a burden.
#19. I know that Takashi Miike said the ending with Kiga reappearing alive is meant to be a bit different in the Japanese cut. When you think of him as some sort of demon it makes sense that he’s still alive. When you see this version, though, it is a bit strange that Kiga shows back up and survives the whole ordeal.
#20. Shinrokuro is my new favorite character. He decides after all of this to just become a bandit and eventually sail to America to bang chicks. #GOALS amirite??
