Culminates in a riveting, ingeniously plotted, and inventively shot 45-minute battle scene.

| Nov 7, 2013

The excessive mind of Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition; Ichi the Killer) throttles back the gore to deliver a disciplined, refreshingly grounded samurai action film.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 14, 2011

13 Assassins looks at honour from many angles, without becoming simplistic. Ichii hasn't lost his edge after all.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2011

Familiar though it may be, as samurai movies go, 13 Assassins" is a killer.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 10, 2011

This slam-bang remake of a 1963 feature by Eichi Kudo builds slowly, accumulating characters and themes, then explodes into a prolonged and masterful battle sequence inside a deserted town.

| Jun 10, 2011

One can pinpoint the exact moment when 13 Assassins transforms from vivid samurai drama to insane work of genius.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 9, 2011

Though 13 Assassins' setup could stand some tightening, it's all necessary prelude to a spectacular, action-packed final hour where all hell breaks loose and the streets and rooftops flow with blood.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 2, 2011

It absolutely, undeniably delivers the goods. And those goods are soaked in blood.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2011

Does Guinness World Records have an entry for longest on-screen fight? If it doesn't, Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins" just set it. And if a record actually exists, Miike's film just broke it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 27, 2011

The dialectic about duty may not translate to a modern Western audience, but the savage sword-fighting is to die for.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 27, 2011

"13 Assassins" has what many action pictures need, a villain who transcends evil and ascends to a realm of barbaric madness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 26, 2011

A richly cathartic experience with a wide range of emotional colors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 19, 2011

A film, like so many samurai stories (and American westerns) about brotherhood, justice and sacrifice, 13 Assassins is, at turns, thrilling and funny, visually exquisite and emotionally charged.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 12, 2011

Miike's magisterial craftsmanship is beyond doubt as he sets up another complex study of violence and its implications.

| May 10, 2011

Kinetic film-making of a high order.

| May 8, 2011

Miike directs the "village of death" battle with an astonishing relentlessness: just when you think you've seen the last bout of flesh-skewering, he tips another bloody bucket of slaughter into the mix.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2011

What's special about 13 Assassins is a 45-minute battle scene in which 13 heroic warriors take on the vastly superior army of a wickedly sadistic Shogun lord.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2011

13 Assassins musters nearly twice as many swordsmen as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and is about two-thirds as good, although it delivers the requisite genre thrills.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 5, 2011

Epic in scope, ambition, and execution, it's a classic swords-and-samurai film with postmodern blood and guts, and it's completely satisfying.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 5, 2011

Pays off thrillingly with a virtuoso 45-minute bloodbath you won't easily forget.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 5, 2011