13 Assassins
My friend showed this last night at movie night and as I expected, it was awesome. I am not going to do an actual review for it as the movie has been out for a while and also, since it was so awesome, it would just be 800 words of me gushing on about how great martial arts movies are. If you don’t like Martial Arts movies that I am sure you will enjoy a nice quiet evening in with Teddy Ruxpin.
By the way, for an image I was all set to pull one of the Martial Arts or Bruce Lee shirts, but then came across this gem from the Funny T Shirt category and once I stopped laughing decided I had to roll with it.
Anyway, the first thing I want to talk about from 13 Assassins is the cultural differences in the aesthetics of death. In Western movies deaths of characters are really formulaic. Either they are bad guys who fall over nicely dead after one punch or bullet, or they are heroes who die relatively peacefully after imparting some sage last words to the other characters. What you do not ever see in Western films is characters crawling through the mud, writhing in agony as their disemboweled guts spill out. You don’t see bad guys crawling along the floor or begging for their lives as they try to get away from the “good” guys (unless it’s Kill Bill). However, 13 Assassins showed all that and did so with more blood than you will ever see in a Hollywood film. I don’t know if it’s actors in Hollywood demanding that their faces be seen cleanly and relatively pristinely (aside from the occasional artistic smear of grease or dirt) or if this is something that Hollywood producers think the American audiences needs for our soft brains, but in this film every character has enough blood, mud and guts on their face to fill a biohazard bag of medical waste. It’s like they were all wrestling chainsaw juggling bear/porcupine hybrids (borcupine?).
The second thing I noticed from a film production point of view was the difference in action segmentation from Western to Eastern films. What do I mean by that? Basically in Western films even long, extended action sequences are punctuated by moments of relative calm wherein the heroes collect their breath, express feeling for each other, or just stand looking around a bit while the camera pulls back to pan around the amazingly wrecked set they have produced. Again, I think these are more evidence of producers having no respect for American audiences and feeling like we need a break in order to collect our breath and prepare for the next action barrage. Some movie producers go so far as the interject the action with a more mundane or slower sequence (defusing the bomb, trying to save the life of an injured person, etc) or simply mash multiple action scenes together into a horrible murky soup (cough cough Lucas cough cough).
In this film once the final action starts it is 55 minutes of swords and blood. Every time the good guys kill off all the bad guys in sight instead of a break they get…more bad guys. Instead of blasts of action it’s like trying to move forward while someone shoots a fire hose into your chest, but in a good way. I don’t know if this style will catch on here as it is entirely possible the American movie producers are right and Western audiences actually do need short breaks between action in order to properly process our emotions, but I found it fun and interesting.
Finally, and this point will seem very obvious to anyone who has studied feudal Japan and the Samurai culture, but it was interesting to see the nature of duty explored from the Japanese perspective. There was no debate or discussion of what everyone’s duty was. Each character had an absolutely clear, black-and-white job to do and never had to debate or hesitate. Even the few times it came up it was almost an insult to even discuss it. Very cool in my opinion.
Anyway, the movie rocks. If you enjoy Martial Arts films or Kurosawa than this is a must see. Watch it sub titled as a lot of the emotions behind the action is transmitted via voice and tone. I don’t think dubbed would do this film credit.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see a midnight movie tonight (Dark Shadows, I think) and review it tomorrow morning. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or post a comment here if you have seen this movie and would like to make a point. If you have suggestions or specific questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Have a great day. Talk to you soon.
Dave
