13 Assassins Reviews
Top CriticFamiliar though it may be, as samurai movies go, 13 Assassins" is a killer.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
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.
One can pinpoint the exact moment when 13 Assassins transforms from vivid samurai drama to insane work of genius.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Epic. Unforgettable. Relentless. Magnificently entertaining.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
"13 Assassins" has what many action pictures need, a villain who transcends evil and ascends to a realm of barbaric madness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
A richly cathartic experience with a wide range of emotional colors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
13 Assassins is a savage, insane movie - in the best way possible.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Epic in scope, ambition, and execution, it's a classic swords-and-samurai film with postmodern blood and guts, and it's completely satisfying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The film is built as a long crescendo, opening at a level of considered, Zen-like reflection and ending with a prolonged cacophony of elaborate, town-wide annihilation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Has a mixture of bloodletting and exultation that would make Sam Peckinpah sit up in his grave and howl with pleasure.
13 Assassins is reliably entertaining, but ultimately it's too traditional to be a classic.
The great thing, typically, about a Takashi Miike film is that there's no such thing as a typical Takashi Miike film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"13 Assassins" is a must-see for Miike's passionate legion of fans. But even action buffs who've never seen any of his films before will be drawn in by this masterful exercise in cinematic butchery.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
A classic samurai movie, right up there among the finest in the genre.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
"13 Assassins" isn't just an action adventure with horror credentials, but a study in criminal pathology.
A stirring, unexpectedly moving story of love and blood...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Visually spectacular, with wide-screen cinematography from Nobuyasu Kita, impressive, full-scale sets and special effects and exhausting, immersive action scenes, "13 Assassins" is pretty nearly the samurai classic it sets out to become.
If Miike had to make all of his other flicks to get to this brilliant catharsis, it was worth it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Surprisingly few surprises in this classic samurai costumer from Japan's dark iconoclast Takeshi Miike.
Perhaps something important was spirited away with the 20 minutes of footage shorn for this U.S. release, but the combatants are scarcely distinguishable here even before disappearing under layers of mud and guts.
It shows that Takashi could be a great filmmaker if he'd only slow down.
Wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism.
