Amazon.com: 13 Assassins (English Subtitled): Takashi Miike, Takashi Hirajô, Minami Ichikawa, Toshiaki Nakazawa: Amazon Instant Video

13 Assassins (English Subtitled)

In this thrilling samurai film, 13 warriors join forces to kill an evil tyrant pushing a nation to the brink of war. Facing suicidal odds, they must take on his deadly army in an epic fight to the death.

Directed by: Takashi Miike
Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes
Release year: 2011
Studio: Magnolia

Synopsis: In this thrilling samurai film, 13 warriors join forces to kill an evil tyrant pushing a nation to the brink of war. Facing suicidal odds, they must take on his deadly army in an epic fight to the death.

Starring: Kôji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada

Supporting actors: Yûsuke Iseya, Gorô Inagaki, Masachika Ichimura, Mikijirô Hira, Hiroki Matsukata, Ikki Sawamura, Arata Furuta, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Masataka Kubota, Sôsuke Takaoka, Seiji Rokkaku, Yûma Ishigaki, Kôen Kondô, Ikki Namioka, Shinnosuke Abe, Kazue Fukiishi, Megumi Kagurazaka, Nizaemon Kataoka

Directed by: Takashi Miike

Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama

Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes

Captions and Subtitles: Details

Release year: 2011

Studio: Magnolia

MPAA Rating: Rated R for sequences of bloody violence, some disturbing images and brief nudity

ASIN: B004TPTHCO

Rights & Requirements

Rental rights: 48 hour viewing period. Details

Purchase rights: Stream instantly and download to 2 locations. Details

Format: Amazon Instant Video (streaming online video and digital download)

Customer Reviews

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195 of 208 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressed Native Japanese March 29, 2011

By Coolsaya

Format:Amazon Instant Video|Amazon Verified Purchase

Being native Japanese, I can be a little nit-picky about movies that are era-centric especially when it comes to feudal Japan. This movie did not insult my intelligence, was true to form with depicting the nature of Japan pre-Meiji era and gave me goosebumps with its intensity. This movie is both entertaining, intelligent and brings to life a culture (Samurai) that few today may be aware of. This is a true Samurai movie in form and delivery without being over the top. Thank you Amazon for making it available online. This is a definite must add to my movie collection.

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85 of 95 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic samurai action May 2, 2011

By Craig Clark VINE™ VOICE

Format:Blu-ray

I caught this on HDnet movies last week and was thoroughly impressed with everything about it. Great action sequences, great acting and dialogue (although I don't know Japanese - going by the subtitles), and the cinematography is amazing. Japan is a beautiful country and you certainly see this in wondrous HD.

The build up to the final battle scene is a little slow and the gruesome scenes which setup the evil nature of the protaganist's target might be a little bit overly done (the target practice on the remaining Mamiya family in particular). I would have actually liked to see more character development with the original samurai and the couple of ronin but then the movie would have been over 3 hours long.

Visually a few CG elements look less than stellar (flaming cattle and horses falling from an exploding bridge), I am guessing this is probably more to do with the CG production than anything else.

Despite a few qualms I wouldn't take a star off because the final, extremely long battle scene is just incredibly awesome. I haven't seen the original B&W version from 1963 but I might have to try to find it, if its half as good.

Even now with the movie sitting on my DVR I am looking forward to picking up Takashi Miike's masterpiece on bluray as soon as it comes out.

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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, but forgettable. July 24, 2011

By Armando N. Roman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Blu-ray

Like many others, I'd read nothing but great reviews about 13 Assassins. Heck, a friend of mine saw a screening of it last year at the Venice Film Festival and told me to remember the name so I could check it out when it finally hit the States, and he and I have nearly identical tastes in movies. I just watched the movie about 3 hours ago, and I can't say I remember much of the movie apart from the huge battle at the end. The first third of the movie is spent gathering the assassins, the middle is preparing things for the battle, and the rest is taking out bad guys. Directed by Takashi Miike, this is one of his most mature films to date, and when I say that, I don't mean that it has tons of content for 'mature audiences' like blood, tons of gore, etc. I mean that he's toned things down quite a bit here, and made a modern samurai movie that echoes the likes of Akira Kurosawa's. But that's where one of the problems lies as well.

The plot of 13 Assassins is easy to explain- there's an immature, cruel lord, Naritsugu, on his way to a higher rank. A group of 12 samurai band together and plot his assassination. They can't just go in with a sneak attack, or even take him out when he's about to board a boat, so they plan a pretty good course of action. First they'll get the leader of one village, whose son was killed by the evil lord, to block entry through their village to that Naritsugu and his troops will have to take an alternate route. When they eventually come to another village, that's where the 12 samurai will trap and attack the lord. Things go according to plan for the most part, but the samurai end up being joined by a comical hunter named Kiga, who was found trapped in a cage high up in a tree. He was hanging around as punishment for laying his hands on "the boss' woman".... Still, the samurai proceed with their plans to take out Naritsugu, but if you've seen films like Seven Samurai, you know how things usually go in cases like this.

Alright, I know people will throw a fit over an average rating like mine, but I'll get the pros out of the way first, because there were a few things I really did like about 13 Assassins. It has gorgeous cinematography- simple locations like a creek in the woods looked stunning, eventhough I see things like that all the time here in Oregon. The locations they used for this film were perfect. I also really dug the soundtrack and will probably end up getting a couple of the tracks, if not the whole album. All the performances by the actors were spot-on, with no one being over the top or coming off as a B-list actor. The actors who portrayed samurai Shinzaemon and Heizo stood out the most, as did Shinzaemon's friend/rival Hanbei. Finally, while the final battle did go on a little longer than I would've liked, the action sequences were well-choreographed, and I loved that none of the samurai had any kind of special abilities of skills over the others like many other movies of this kind would. Too many samurai movies end up turning into film equivalents of Dynasty Warriors or some other game. The fights are very real, and while I don't have a problem with graphic violence, things are done very tastefully here.

Wait, that makes everything sound great, right? Well, I had a lot of small problems that added up over the course of the movie. The first one being that I didn't care about any of the samurai and who lived or died. The leader Shinzaemon was a good leader and all, but because of how quickly they get to the village to prepare for battle and other scenes prior to this, there wasn't much time spent developing or showing any of the samurai's personalities. Sure, there's a comical scene here and there, like one with two samurai learning the art of explosives, but aside from that, can anyone who's seen this movie honestly tell me they were sad when something would happen to one of them? There's ONE scene that sticks out that gave a little humanity to one character, and that's when we find out that he's never killed anyone before- they've only practiced with real swords. His reaction seems genuine, and again, not overdone. But even the would-be comic relief character of Kiga doesn't get much time because screen time is cut almost evenly amongst the samurai, and that hurts. There's not even really a super cool samurai here to root for, like how Seven Samurai had Kikuchiyo and Kyuzo. There are two or three that are a little more skilled than the others, but it's not that much of a difference. And like many of Miike's other movies, the CG here is pretty bad. A scene involving flaming cattle could've been much, much better if the animations weren't so poor. Think back to the climax of Zebraman and that's about the quality to expect with these...only this is a movie that's supposed to be taken seriously. There were a few tiny problems but my last big one has to do with the translation on the English subtitles. I haven't been fluent in Japanese for over 8 years now, but even I could tell when a few lines weren't translated properly, or when something was toned down. Is it too much to ask for accurate subtitles?

First things first regarding the blu-ray: yes, the run time of the movie is shorter than the Japanese version, but all the deleted scenes are included in the special features, and Miike felt that these scenes slowed the movie down. And you know what? He's right. There were only two scenes in here that were worth keeping (one only for comedic value, which would've SEVERELY helped Kiga's character). The other special features are a trailer and a nice 20 minute interview with Miike. And the picture and audio quality of the blu-ray? Nearly flawless. Crank this sucker up and watch this on your biggest tv. It looks and sounds that good.

I can't say that I'll be recommending 13 Assassins to anyone, but it's definitely not a bad movie. 'definitely one of Miike's better movies, and a step in the right direction for the guy since the quality of nearly everything is better than his usual work. I just wish I cared about the characters a little more. It's always great to have a big battle where characters aren't made out to be gods, and to see them getting tired, especially when it's 200 against 13, but had that huge fight been trimmed down by even 10 minutes and more time was given to flesh out even a handful of the samurai, I would've easily given this another star. Read more ›

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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing May 15, 2011

By wiredweird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:DVD

This gets off to an acceptable start. A sadistic warlord stands way too close to the throne - bad enough what he does to the commoners around him, it would be vastly worse if the whole nation were his plaything. A band of 12 assassins is enlisted, and they're off. We establish personal loyalties and conflicts early on, compressed into traditional forms by the rigid code of bushido. Although well executed, this seemed ordinary up to about the half-way point, when an improbable thirteenth joins the band.

The group picks a small town for their ambush. They buy out the village and turn it into their trap. The villagers bait the trap with themselves, lure the warlord and his retainers in, then escape to safety as the trap springs. The rest of the movie, a solid 45 minutes, presents one of the most incredible fight scenes in cinematic history. I mean, the fighting is believable - no flying swordsmen or outlandish weaponry - but I've never seen a movie sustain an adrenaline rush for so long. And, despite the fast-moving action, it never turns repetitive. The 13th, although the comedic element, brings his own contribution to the mayhem as well.

The ending comes in suitably heroic (and Japanese) style, with a brief reminder of just why the world would be better off without that warlord. Then, in a final moment, we suddenly wonder just who or what that 13th might be.

A world with Kurosawa in it has very high standards to meet. Maybe "13 Assassins" doesn't meet the very highest, but its a good one anyway, and worth coming back to.

-- wiredweird

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great

The movie was really good even with the subtitles and kept you going throughout the movie. I would definitely order from them again and recommend others do the same.

Published 22 days ago by kermitte81

5.0 out of 5 stars Glorious film making in the tradition of Japan's best Samurai movies

I must say I am pleasantly suprised that this film was not the all out gore driven blood bath that we might have expected from Takashi Miike. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Natja Kristy