96% 13 Assassins

All Critics (93) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (89) | Rotten (4) | DVD (2)

Familiar though it may be, as samurai movies go, 13 Assassins" is a killer.

This slam-bang remake of a 1963 feature by Eichi Kudo builds slowly, accumulating characters and themes, then explodes into a prolonged and masterful battle sequence inside a deserted town.

One can pinpoint the exact moment when 13 Assassins transforms from vivid samurai drama to insane work of genius.

Epic. Unforgettable. Relentless. Magnificently entertaining.

Does Guinness World Records have an entry for longest on-screen fight? If it doesn't, Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins" just set it. And if a record actually exists, Miike's film just broke it.

"13 Assassins" has what many action pictures need, a villain who transcends evil and ascends to a realm of barbaric madness.

A remake of a classic film that is a classic on its own terms. Miike's battleground choreography in the final 20 minutes or so is cinema at its most sublime, a ballet of cruelty second to none.

Makes a considerable effort to slow cook the set-up, making the road to death's door something significant, moving away from empty stylistics to stage a film of icy warrior valor.

The grandiose concluding sequence is not staged with finesse or subtlety, but with brutal finality. It is the Japanese samurai film equivalent of a barroom brawl on an epic scale, and the violence is punishing.

It's an incredibly violent, insanely entertaining movie that features scores of baddies getting killed by sword, arrow, knife, boiling oil, even a stampede of bulls. Wait, check that. Not just bulls. Flaming bulls.

If you love action or samurai movies you cannot miss this film. To adapt Spinal Tap's line, this one turns it up to 13.

If you can handle the blood, it's a very satisfying tale of vengeance and honor.

Miike may have classed things up, but he certainly hasn't sold out.

Though 13 Assassins' setup could stand some tightening, it's all necessary prelude to a spectacular, action-packed final hour where all hell breaks loose and the streets and rooftops flow with blood.

Miike's movie is a creditable attempt at a chanbara and he takes the genre seriously

Too much of a good thing - that's Miike's trademark.

13 Assassins may well be the most wholly accomplished and satisfying film to come our way all year.

The 13th assassin, an uncouth mountain man, offers a critique of his noble companions -- and of the code-of-duty genre he finds himself occupying -- when he comments: 'Do only samurai matter in this world?'

It absolutely, undeniably delivers the goods. And those goods are soaked in blood.

The final 40-plus minutes are bananas.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/13_assassins_2011/

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