13 Assassins (2010)

Generally, I try to write about movies that are from lightly to strongly deserving to be recommended. There are exceptions when I don't have the time to see something to fit into this. Today however, I'm gonna make an exception from the exceptions and although I could find a much better (talking about movie value) title to focus on, I've chosen the current one deliberately for an anti-recommendation blog entry. The reason is simply that I was surprised (well, retroactively .. after I've seen the movie) by the ratings it has on pretty much all of the sites: IMDb, Metacritic, RT, etc. And to that to, just fill it up, I could add also some mini-reviews I quickly read to be sure I'm talking about the right movie. It's not because I was expecting more (although I was expecting more ...). It's not because it's an asian production (Japanese to be more precise) that has its specific elements related with the country's culture, reflected in the script, general feeling, etc, and those might seem a bit stupid or exaggerated at some points in time for somebody who's from the western or central part of the Globe. This is not a problem, and as I actually recently wrote I really do have a positive opinion about the eastern cinema (even better than about the European one I might say). The thing is just that "13 Assassins" is a weak weak movie.

Let's say two words about the subject. We have an action set sometime around the early 19th century, the final part of the shogun era in Japan. A pretty quiet period, considering the internal armed conflicts, according to the movie at least. Thing that seems to bore a lot one of the lords placed in charge of a province by the shogun, especially considering that the guy seems to be well qualified for a position in a dark and isolated room of a mental sanatorium for his demented lust of blood. By the way, the first part of the movie has some scenes R rated considering the roughness of the visuals you get to see (and those may make sense if what is following would have been any good or at least more complex .. but in this case are just a piece of trashy gratuitous violence). Going on with the story .. because the appointment of the tyrannical lord was official his subject can't do much .. also officially .. Unofficially however, we have a bunch of samurais - 12 in number in the end + one more .. cheerful .. character added to the group, deciding that things must be set in order by assassinating the evil lord. I don't know if I should give other details because I've already said pretty much everything. There isn't any more in the main subject besides this, half of the movie is the plotting and the other half is a final battle = the execution of the plan.

I think it's a low budget movie, or at least it looks like (or maybe just looks and it's not .. which already tells a lot). The cinematography, the editing and the sound are quite ordinary. I won't say bad, but they don't have anything remarkable. Which is a minus, considering that's a movie with potential at least here if for the story we can't say much. The action takes place more than 90% of the time outdoors and there is a lot of action in the raw sense of the word. As a script, besides the fact you don't have any complexity in the story, and leaving out the cliche parts for which we can consider that those are specific to the culture, time, etc ... there is the final battle, which is very very bad written I think. First of all, is way too long, that's why I'm actually giving thought to that (and also because it's praised as action part on some sites ...). The thing is that besides it's long, it's also plain stupid as script and direction in some points. We have some battle decisions that are amazingly dumb even considering the way of the samurai - to die in battle (but completely forgetting that the battle is supposed to be won as main purpose) - something like "well, it seems it's too boring killing with arrows from an elevated position without much risk, let's drop into battle and see how it's feeling to be surrounded face to face by ten armed bad guys" (at least if the arrow stock was depleted ...). And after this we get some scenes that look like taken from a B series Hong Kong movie where the ten bad surrounding guys try to be as fair as possible and to attack one at a time - and it's actually visible ! (you have at least two scenes where the enemy has the spear almost in the back of a samurai and seems that he's just watching for birds ...). And to add more the ten bad guys are actually more like 20 and maybe it won't be a problem if at some point it wouldn't be stated that there are only 130 enemies left (like it was reported by some electronic scoreboard ...) and they are still flowing in numbers surpassing for sure that value.

Maybe all the bad stuff above could be ignored ... but the problem is that there isn't anything left to appreciate. The only good part of the movie is the acting I think, but .. without much use .. because with two or three exceptions, the characters remain quite undeveloped. You have 13 assassins, but if you try to enumerate all of them after the movie ends, I don't know if you'll be able, because some have only a few lines during the final battle. I'm really wondering, where is the resemblance with the Kurosawa movies, that I've seen mentioned here and there. Well, I don't know .. Probably I'm also overrating it but ...

Rating: 2 out of 5