13 Assassins

Amazon.com It stands to reason that there must be something pretty dastardly about the target of the assassination plot that makes up Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins; after all, an enormous amount of energy and planning goes into this effort. And hoo boy, have we got a dastardly villain for you: Japanese feudal lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), the demented half-brother of the emperor. His taste for perversity results in a few early scenes that will test the gag reflex of unprepared viewers (and let fans of Miike know that the director of Audition still has his gonzo streak, even if the rest of the movie is conventional by his standards). Court councilors agree that somebody needs to take Naritsugu out, lest this madman actually ascend to power; thus a veteran samurai (Koji Yakusho, the charismatic star of Shall We Dance and Cure) is charged with assembling a team that can eliminate him. The movie spends some time on the (always sure-fire) method of picking the expert samurai who will join the mission, and then plunges headlong into an epic battle sequence. 13 Assassins delivers on the spectacle, as Naritsugu has 200 soldiers at his side, so the destruction of an entire small town is called for in the final throwdown. Miike is an adept field marshal, and the movie has plenty of crazy-go-nuts moments (as well as a couple of borderline-mystical puzzlers), but he also takes the time to explore the delicacies of the samurai code: in particular, Naritsugu's chief of security (Masachika Ichimura) is as disgusted with his boss as anybody else, but must live according to the oath he swore when he took the job--an exquisite sort of self-debasement. In short, action connoisseurs will find little to fault in this big-scale samurai epic. --Robert Horton Product Description Thirteen brave Samurai must face overwhelming odds in an epic battle against a sadistic lord and his army of 200 to prevent him from plunging Japan into war.
ASIN: B004XQO8MS
VSKU: DBV.B004XQO8MS.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Koji Yakusho|Takayuki Yamada|Hiroki Matsukata|Yusuke Iseya|Goro Inagaki|Masachika Ichimura|Mikijiro Hira|Ikki Sawamura|Arata Furuta|Tsuyoshi Ihara|Masataka Kubota|Sousuke Takaoka|Seiji Rokkaku|Koen Kondo|Yuma Ishigaki|Kazuki Namioka|Kazue Fukiishi|Koshiro Matsumoto|Mitsuki Tanimura|Takumi Saito|Shinnosuke Abe|Masaaki Uchino|Ken Mitsuishi|Ittoku Kishibe|Takashi Miike|Michihiko Umezawa|Shigeji Maeda|Paulo Branco|Toichiro Shiraishi|Hirotsugu Yoshida|Minami Ichikawa|Takahiro Ohno
Binding: Dvd
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Individually inspected: Guaranteed to play perfectly or your money back. Case may show wear and may be in library packaging. Ships Fast!