13 ASSASSINS- Review

It was announced last week that the director of The Tournament, Scott Mann, who hails from my hometown, has signed up to direct a modern remake of Seven Samurai. Yeah, that Seven Samurai. It's not to say it won't turn out perfectly fine, but it's difficult to discount that we've already had The Magnificent Seven and even A Bug's Life, as well as a period piece set in Japan that owes a debt to Kurosawa's original, 13 Assassins.

Young Lord Naritsugu enjoys a position of privilege above practically everyone else, because he is the younger brother of the Shogun, and so his life is sacred. Unfortunately, he's also a sadistic monster who murders and destroys at will. As the age of the samurai is on the way out, an old samurai named Shinzaemon is hired to assassinate Naritsugu. He discreetly recruits 12 more assassins to his suicide mission and prepare for a confrontation.

The version of 13 Assassins now playing in UK cinemas is 126 minutes long, and it's comprised of one part historical politics and one part balls-to-the-wall, headsploding, sword-slicing mayhem. Seasoned director Takashi Miike has constructed what some are calling his masterpiece, and not without good reason. The plot, with all of its historical implications and faith to the political entanglements of feudal Japan, is deceptively simple. The first hour serves to develop the characters, and all else is a sustained battle sequence that is just awe-inspiring.

Although I maintain that the film owes a very clear debt to the formula of Seven Samurai, it's also a film that throws in a flaming stampede of cows to prefix its centrepiece action sequence. Just to repeat that- the cows are on fire. Samurai films may be nothing new, and this may repeat elements of previous outings, but it has cows on fire. Its surprisingly funny and always innovative moments of spectacle are what set it apart.

It's unfortunate that the titular assassins are less distinctive from one another. Seven Samurai has almost half as many protagonists and it's a much longer film, so it's far more difficult to fully characterise every single one of Shinzaemon's mates. Naturally, the eccentric loon, as played by Toshirô Mifune in Kurosawa's film and by Yûsuke Iseya in this one, stands out. The rest are less lucky, and it's easy to lose sight of who's dead and who's alive in the final melee. On the plus side, Kôji Yakusho makes Shinzaemon a well-rounded character, particularly in his stand-offs with the baddies.

Almost as if to compensate for the vagaries of all those protagonists, Shinzaemon has a conflicted friendship-cum-rivalry with Hanbei, a former samurai who works as an adviser to Naritsugu that's really quite transfixing. These two men strategise against one another with utterly opposed objectives, and it's their story that really comes to the fore. Gorô Inagaki must also be applauded for his deliciously villainous turn as Naritsugu, a villain you really can't wait to see getting his comeuppance. It only makes that extended climax sweeter.

Although you have more to go on from their motivation than you do from the characters of most of our titular 13 Assassins, Miike has made a triumphant tribute to the samurai epic. It is ludicrously enjoyable, inventively choreographed and just an all-around satisfying movie experience. More importantly, it's a film with all the trappings of a modern classic. For a director as prolific as Miike, that's something very special indeed.

13 Assassins is now playing in select cinemas nationwide. It will also be released on DVD and blu-ray on September 5th.
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If you've seen 13 Assassins, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

I SAW THE DEVIL- Review

I Saw The Devil is about as far away as you can get from the blanket coverage of the royal wedding farrago earlier today, as you'll know if you got the chance to take a trip to the cinema to see it, instead of watching the Disney-esque romantic gubbins. Due to its uber-violent content, it's had a limited release today ahead of a DVD release next Monday.

In the vein of other revenge thrillers, a popular genre in Korea, we find a man who loses a loved one to a vicious murderer. Soo-hyeon is a secret agent whose pregnant fiancee is killed by the sadistic Kyung-chul. Taking two weeks' leave from work, he decides to track down Kyung-chul himself, but rather than taking vengeance forthwith, he begins an increasingly savage game of catch and release.

I don't know that I Saw The Devil is the goriest film ever made, as some have called it, but it's understandable that 144 minutes of what must certainly be the goriest film of 2011 seems like a bigger deal. For 144 minutes, it's surprisingly fast-paced and zippy. The difficulty for some will be that it's also rather stabby, hammer-y and choppy as well. The blood pours, flows, drizzles, squirts, gushes in a way that obscures many potentially more violent films from memory.

The two nemeses in the film are played by Byung-hun Lee and Min-sik Choi, the latter of whom was the hero (sort of) in Oldboy. Here, Choi is despicable and exasperated by equal turns as a sociopathic serial killer who frequently grumbles about how everybody is crazy except him. This while perpetrating hideous violence against women and repeatedly falling into the traps of his increasingly demented pursuer. After a while, he becomes almost like Wile E. Coyote, or Tom, or Scratchy, or another abused cartoon animal of your choice.

It's effectively a black comedy, though obviously splattered sporadically with red. The difficulty is that every now and then, the supporting characters, who are as satellites in this gory game of cat-and-mouse, will stop the action dead to refer to Nietzsche. The "He Who Fights Monsters" trope is easy to swallow just as long as characters don't stand around and talk about it. The character of Soo-hyeon is also another of those revenge movie protagonists with little personality to get us behind him.

Of course, after the opening scene, in which his fiancee meets her untimely and painful end, we want Hyung-chul to get his comeuppance. It's just hard to care about Soo-hyeon because he's nothing so complex as the film's Nietzschean musings. So often these films forget to install a personality. Motivation goes some of the way, but without personality, it does amount to 144 minutes of hard violence, sometimes from a deranged killer who we definitely don't like, and also from a protagonist we're meant to like but who, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, is actually "just this guy, you know?"

I Saw The Devil is certainly a tough watch, less because of the punishing amounts of gore and violence, or even because of the running time, and more because it's heavy-handed and there is less to it than you would think. Its moral compass is in perfect working order, it's artfully constructed and always shocking, but there's not as much to it as I would have expected. If you even have to ask after reading all of this if you're going to like it or not, then it's probably not for you.

I Saw The Devil is now showing in limited release nationwide, and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 9th.
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If you've seen I Saw The Devil, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.