13 Assassins (2010) ***

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  1. Only ***, huh? I was thoroughly entertained by this movie.

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  2. Anonymous1/12/2012

    Indeed, this is 5 star material all the way.

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  3. Started out great. The build up was handled assuredly and promised greatness, but then it began to degrade little by little.

    **SPOILERS**

    Things I didn't like:

    - CGI bulls on fire. Not so much the idea of it, just that it was poorly rendered

    - Battle was TOO long at the end. I like action just fine, but I don't need 30+ mins of it in a row.

    - Not enough build up to the battle. I wanted a little bit character development for "the 13". Only a few of them received this. Also we didn't see the samurai building these gigantic sliding branch walls or preparing the village for battle. I suppose that In a film where we see every other step of their journey, this element felt skipped over. I guess the director's cut is 15 mins longer; perhaps it restores some of this.

    - The particularly gory (rock head bash), shaky/sideways cam scene felt out of place.

    - This is more of a technical gripe, but the overly artificial, clearly Foley'd sword swipes, punches and other "action!" noises really took me out of the battle.

    - The ending...I liked that there was a bit of a quiet moment for the coda, after all the fighting had finished, but I thought it was more than a few beats too long.

    - Overall, it just felt too much like 'Seven Samurai', which was the influence for the original 'Thirteen Assassins' (1963).

    I thought about giving the film ***1/2, but it just didn't quite get there for me.

    I'd like to see the original.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057212/

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