13 Assassins

Saw 13 Assassins (thanks, Basil!) The film was about a colossal fight between 13 assassins vs 70 grunts. The film is fairly restrained, considering this premise. The assassins are not excessively cool and they don't have gratuitous show-off scenes. The mood is not so much kick-ass as just grim and cynical. The lead-up to the fight is spent subtly reassuring us viewers that the good guys will win and that the fight will be epic and motivating the heroes' actions. Shit gets quite grim here. There's a lot of super-cruelty that I was at first enjoying the grotesque excess of. The Asian lack of filmic restraint (which I've brought up before. It is my pet theory, nourished with gobs of confirmation bias.) serves this film well. The bad guy is just so psychotically evil, we want to see him punished. The good guys are motivated to rebellion against their will and we feel for their weary "well someone's gotta do something" attitude. And then, oh lordy, that fight scene.

The fight scene is really worth it. It's just so kick-ass. There's flaming bulls, man. Flaming bulls. After this heady climax, things sober up a little and the red corn syrup drenches our heroes. There's 13 of them, so what's one or two less, you see? The ending is very bleak and weary, leaving us a little disillusioned and (if we are not self-indulgent) a little disgusted with ourselves. When the baddie is defeated, and when the grunts are being mowed down in that fight, it is awesome and satisfying, but I can't help remembering the moralizing of Tarantino. Our schadenfreude taints us as well and tugs at our facile sense of own decency.

A good movie, it's definitely the best action movie I've seen in a while. Check it out. The biggest flaw, I would say, is that I had to read subtitles. Really there should be a shot-for-shot remake with American actors to correct this travesty. And also that way there can be one-liners! And/or dubstep! And Wilhelm screams! And also, why do *none* of the horses talk? Hollywood, you've been asleep at the wheel.

Edit: oh wait, Takashi Miike directed this? The super-cruelty and grimness make sense now. As does the ending. He is another director who argues for necessary evils, and whose logic makes me uncomfortable. Good show, Miike. I really should watch more of you.