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13 Assassins
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Not if you have to fight the fish. And not if the fish is a whale. Also Fishing. Horses. Stickbugs. Rabbits. And let's count that shot of the naked kid pissing in the street, we didn't need that did we?
13 Assassins reminded me, unpleasantly, of Seven Samurai, a much better movie, and The Raid, a slightly better movie.
The first 15 minutes, which I reiterate is the standard window of time I give for movies to sell me on their premise, was terrible. It was a monumental drag through and I credit that to a combination of needlessly drumming up cartoonishly evil crimes to pin on the Big Bad as well as the trope I still have no title for: LOTSA NAME-DROPPING, but nothing hits the floor.
I've complained about this repeatedly in movies; it's that annoying form of exposition that's nothing but characters flat out describing the relevant and non-relevant names and organizations that are offscreen as if this is all super important setup to absorb, yet by the end of the movie, I can tell you EXACTLY what happened, but I'll be damned if I remember a single name of one of 13 samurai in the title of your FRICKEN' MOVIE!
It's ridiculous, it takes at least 49 minutes for any real action to show up and after the halfway point of the movie I feel like I'm watching a ****** version of Seven Samurai that plays like a slightly better version of Azumi.
I don't know any of these characters, and even taking up 2 hours the 13 Assassins absolutely pale in comparison to the Seven Samurai. The whole movie just looks dirty, there's some skin-deep introspection about how "being a samurai is about dying for your master" which, I digress, is a phenomenally stupid basis for conflict... BUT THEN, we are talking about a society that advocates harakiri which we're offered to watch twice in the movie.
Both times I'm positively baffled why it's in the movie, because it neither lends me a positive outlook on it's world or it's characters and the topic isn't addressed in any critical way. They open the movie with one (why?) and there's another partway through when a man out for revenge for his murdered family forbids passage on a bridge to The Big Bad. Instead of fighting, the Big Bad turns and leaves. So the guy kills himself.
WHAT was that about? Too bad the Big Bad didn't know that the mere acceptance of the rule against crossing bridges would provoke the enforcers of that rule to kill themselves. Imagine how many laws you could break if an "okay, officer" would trigger cops to shoot themselves?
Now obviously the reason here is that he can't bear to live in the world without his family, but COME ON, how was he managing BEFORE today? Why did he see his chance for revenge and pass on it? This scene is just a driveby, the writers giggling to themselves in their truck as they roll up to smash a mailbox only to hit it and dent the hood. AND THEY DON'T EVEN NOTICE.
The movie even ends with one of the only two survivors saying he's gonna become a bandit. Nice. A real straight A student we got there, a true hero. 'Course, these are also the guys who thought an appropriate ambush tactic was to LIGHT COWS ON FIRE.
Final Verdict: [Just... Bad]
13 Assassins
Action / Japanese / 2010
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
"12 men can never defeat 200."
"So what? As for the fish that takes the hook, the bigger, the better."
"So what? As for the fish that takes the hook, the bigger, the better."
Not if you have to fight the fish. And not if the fish is a whale. Also Fishing. Horses. Stickbugs. Rabbits. And let's count that shot of the naked kid pissing in the street, we didn't need that did we?
13 Assassins reminded me, unpleasantly, of Seven Samurai, a much better movie, and The Raid, a slightly better movie.
The first 15 minutes, which I reiterate is the standard window of time I give for movies to sell me on their premise, was terrible. It was a monumental drag through and I credit that to a combination of needlessly drumming up cartoonishly evil crimes to pin on the Big Bad as well as the trope I still have no title for: LOTSA NAME-DROPPING, but nothing hits the floor.
I've complained about this repeatedly in movies; it's that annoying form of exposition that's nothing but characters flat out describing the relevant and non-relevant names and organizations that are offscreen as if this is all super important setup to absorb, yet by the end of the movie, I can tell you EXACTLY what happened, but I'll be damned if I remember a single name of one of 13 samurai in the title of your FRICKEN' MOVIE!
It's ridiculous, it takes at least 49 minutes for any real action to show up and after the halfway point of the movie I feel like I'm watching a ****** version of Seven Samurai that plays like a slightly better version of Azumi.
Both times I'm positively baffled why it's in the movie, because it neither lends me a positive outlook on it's world or it's characters and the topic isn't addressed in any critical way. They open the movie with one (why?) and there's another partway through when a man out for revenge for his murdered family forbids passage on a bridge to The Big Bad. Instead of fighting, the Big Bad turns and leaves. So the guy kills himself.
WHAT was that about? Too bad the Big Bad didn't know that the mere acceptance of the rule against crossing bridges would provoke the enforcers of that rule to kill themselves. Imagine how many laws you could break if an "okay, officer" would trigger cops to shoot themselves?
Now obviously the reason here is that he can't bear to live in the world without his family, but COME ON, how was he managing BEFORE today? Why did he see his chance for revenge and pass on it? This scene is just a driveby, the writers giggling to themselves in their truck as they roll up to smash a mailbox only to hit it and dent the hood. AND THEY DON'T EVEN NOTICE.
The movie even ends with one of the only two survivors saying he's gonna become a bandit. Nice. A real straight A student we got there, a true hero. 'Course, these are also the guys who thought an appropriate ambush tactic was to LIGHT COWS ON FIRE.