Takashi Miike remaking a classic chambara (trailer), what’s it worth?
• From Twitter
@GuyLodge > Slow to take, but a bloody samurai blast once it does. Unexpectedly dry humour, and love the flaming bulls! #
@yo_damo > Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is really worth a look. Slow start, then… carnage! #
@BeamesOnFilm >13 Assassins is wow-mendous, literally so good I had to make up a word. If I could go in and watch it again right now, I wouldn’t hesitate. #
@dlerer > Very generous second hour of 13 ASSASSINS, by Takashi Miike. Compensates for the dull first half #
@Filmstarts > Miike finally made another good bloody Jiedai geki #
• Variety
Miike proves here he can play it straight when he wants to, and while there’s just enough humor to leaven the proceedings, there’s no winking at the audience or any attempt to subvert the genre. That said, the script interjects a contempo sensibility by raising issue with the strict samurai code that calls for unconditional obedience to masters, even at the cost of what’s best for the nation. There are obvious nods to Kurosawa, but also to more contempo genre fare.
[O]nce again, Miike surprises his audience [...] he opts to follow the genre’s social code and dramaturgy almost slavishly, and the result is a beautifully lensed but rather unremarkable Japanese period piece.
FYI; The Japanese release on Sept. 25 will contain about 20 additional minutes of a scene set in a brothel, just before the climactic fight.
[A] straight-up, even classical, samurai spectacular that trades in bone-dry humor without placing itself entirely in genre-film quote marks. “You think the age of war was like this?” marvels one wide-eyed warrior, surveying the corpses left by a particularly vigorous round of ketchup-colored carnage. “It’s magnificent!”
• Cinema10 [Italia]
[Battles] provide abundant waterfalls of blood [...] Fans of eastern action movies will have fun with this 13 Assassins.
• Ultimo Segundo [Brazil]
At first, the plot is difficult to follow, [but] everything is about the preparation for the great and long final battle. Miike brings his talents at the service of creating visually impressive tricks and sequences of violence – but also humor in the form of funny Koyata, which mocks the samurai and also the films of the genre. It is when the film manages some breath.
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