Venice 2010: 13 Assassins

Posted on Thursday September 9, 2010, 21:31 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar

A quick word about Sergio Corbucci here. When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was heading the jury in Venice, my first thought was that the festival had a plan to honour this very underrated director with what would have been his first (I think) major retrospective. How wrong I was! This year, the retrospective was dedicated instead to Italian comedy, and I must confess that I haven't seen a single one of 'em, largely because the festival doesn't really sell its retrospectives very well. Perhaps as a belated realisation that they had missed an opportunity, the organisers subsequently decided to show a very basic tribute to Corbucci in the form of two midnight screenings; one of Corbucci's 1964 breakthrough (I think) Minnesota Clay and another of his 1967 film The Hellbenders. Annoyingly, I missed Minnesota Clay and opted instead for The Hellbenders, which, although a great movie, didn't come, as Minnesota Clay did, with a short speech from Tarantino to mark the 20th anniversary of Corbucci's death.

If you haven't seen any of Corbucci's films, The Hellbenders is available on Region One, and it's a pretty damn good story of confederate rebels smuggling arms and money home in the coffin of a fallen soldier. Joseph Cotten stars, and it's a very dark, political movie, with some wonderful twists and a very pessimistic view of patriotism. For me, Corbucci's high watermark remains The Great Silence, an absolutely wonderful western set in the wintry wastes of Utah, with a terrific Klaus Kinski performance and one of Ennio Morricone's most memorable scores. Part of me was hoping to see this on a big screen this year, but it didn't happen. Maybe next year? Just a hint...

And so to the main feature: Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins. To be honest, my interest in Miike has waned a little bit lately. He's so prolific and so scattershot that it's hard to know (and sometimes care) what his next film will be. There is probably no comparable director in the west who can slalom between heavy violence (Ichi The Killer, Audition) and family fantasy (the awful Yatterman) while making time to create some of the most queasy comedy ever filmed (Visitor Q). The first hour of 13 Assassins didn't promise much, since it began another one of those “In the year whatever, emperor so-and-so...” prologues and took rather a long time to get going. In a nutshell, it's set in feudal times, when the Shogun's brother, Lord Naritsugu, is abusing his power and enjoying a reign of terror. So to thwart him, a Shogun official (I've no idea how this Shogun stuff works) employs renowned samurai Shinzaemon Shimada to stop him, recruiting a team of 13 warriors as back-up.

As I said, I was nodding off a bit because of all the talking, but when the samurai team buy out a village that's smack in the middle of Naritsugu's route, I began to take notice. Maybe it was the words “death trap”, but it soon became clear that the set-up was leading towards a major set piece. And I was right. As soon as Naritsugu gets to the village, 13 Assassins becomes an exhilarating action movie, with an astonishing use of set design and space. Frankly, I was hoping for more gore and nastiness, and the use of CG (again!) disappointed me a couple of times, but Miike's film is still an adrenaline rush. And not only is it very funny – the samurai code is roundly pilloried – it's also surprisingly dignified, with Koji Yakusho stealing the show as  Shinzaemon and Goro Inagaki indelible as the psychotic Naritsugu. At the start of the festival, it seemed like a long shot for any awards, but I think the cast and director might be in luck at the weekend. Maybe not for the top prize, but this is certainly more than just committed, intelligent and deftly executed genre fare.