The Thousands

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai arguably birthed all-star team caper movies from The Dirty Dozen to Ocean’s Eleven. Takashi Miike’s homage is rather traditional, with only a little of Miike’s trademark lurid flair… until an elegantly choreographed 45 minutes of brutal mayhem in an ingeniously booby-trapped village.

Psychopathic Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagagi) is raping, mutilating and murdering with impunity because he’s the shogun’s younger brother. Outraged bureaucrats secretly hire semi-retired samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate Naritsugu. The wily veteran assembles a dream team including his dissolute young nephew (Takayuki Yamada), a fierce ronin (Tsuyoshi Ihara) and his devoted young apprentice (Masataka Kubota), and an impertinent mountain huntsman (Yūsuke Iseya). But they must outfox Naritsugu’s bodyguard, Shinzaemon’s former friend Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura).

13 Assassins does suffer from the Ocean’s Eleven syndrome of focusing on only the most distinctive protagonists; the others recede anonymously into the background and are killed off rather perfunctorily. Perhaps seven is the largest number of samurai an audience can reasonably remember at once. The ending, though, is suitably noble and dramatic, with a bittersweet sense of resignation rather than triumph. It’s 1844, the samurai age is declining, and soon only Tom Cruise will be left.