A small group of samurai sets out to end a brutal madman’s tyranny in Takashi Miike’s brilliant 13 Assassins
13 ASSASSINS (JÛSAN-NIN NO SHIKAKU) (Takashi Miike, 2010)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, September 23, 4:00 & 7:00
Series runs September 18-28
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com
www.13assassins.com
Japanese director Takashi Miike’s first foray into the samurai epic is a nearly flawless film, perhaps his most accomplished work. Evoking such classics as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Mizoguchi’s 47 Ronin, Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, and Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, 13 Assassins is a thrilling tale of honor and revenge, inspired by a true story. In mid-nineteenth-century feudal Japan, during a time of peace just prior to the Meiji Restoration, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the son of the former shogun and half-brother to the current one, is abusing his power, raping and killing at will, even using his servants and their families as target practice with a bow and arrow. Because of his connections, he is officially untouchable, but Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) secretly hires Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to gather a small team and put an end to Naritsugu’s brutal tyranny. But the lord’s protector, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a former nemesis of Shinzaemon’s, has vowed to defend his master to the death, even though he despises Naritsugu’s actions. As the thirteen samurai make a plan to get to Naritsugu, they are eager to finally break out their long-unused swords and do what they were born to do. “He who values his life dies a dog’s death,” Shinzaemon proclaims, knowing that the task is virtually impossible but willing to die for a just cause. Although there are occasional flashes of extreme gore in the first part of the film, Miike keeps the audience waiting until he unleashes the gripping battle, an extended scene of blood and violence that highlights death before dishonor.
Selected for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, 13 Assassins is one of Miike’s best-crafted tales; nominated for ten Japanese Academy Prizes, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Daisuke Tengan), Best Editing (Kenji Yamashita), Best Original Score (Koji Endo), and Best Actor (Yakusho), it won awards for cinematography (Nobuyasu Kita), lighting direction (Yoshiya Watanabe), art direction (Yuji Hayashida), and sound recording (Jun Nakamura). It’s screening September 23 at 4:00 and 7:00 (with a prerecorded intro from Miike) in the Quad Cinema series “Jeremy Thomas Presents,” consisting of a wide range of films from British producer Thomas, who says of 13 Assassins, “I met Miike at the Venice Film Festival and proposed him a Tanizaki book I had, and he said to me, ‘Well, I’ve got this idea for a special samurai movie, and would you like to produce it?’ — which started this relationship of four movies with Miike. Three years later, we were back premiering the film at the festival. It’s truly an epic story with memorable characters, and the finale rivals anything we’ve ever seen, and everything was shot in-camera with a film camera. I was thrilled with the worldwide reception for this film. Really spectacular.”
The series, which runs at the Quad through September 28, includes such other works as Stephen Frears’s The Hit, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (followed by a Q&A with Thomas and Julian Schnabel), David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (followed by a Q&A with Thomas and composer Howard Shore), Nagisa Ōshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast, and Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout, in conjunction with the September 21 theatrical release of Mark Cousins’s documentary The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, with Cousins and Thomas participating in a Q&A after the 7:15 show on September 22 to discuss their filmed trip to Cannes.