Certificate:

Director: Takashi Miike

Release Date: 25 September 2010

Tagline: Take up your sword.

Main Cast:

Kôji Yakusho … Shinzaemon Shimada

Takayuki Yamada … Shinrouko

Yûsuke Iseya … Koyata

Gorô Inagaki … Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira

WARNING – MAJOR SPOILER BELOW!

This should have been called 12 Assassins and a Village Idiot With a Sling Shot. I love a good martial arts and sword fight film, but this is tedious beyond belief. Films of this genre, e.g. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,  are usually very believable. I understand that you sometimes have to suspend disbelief, but this goes beyond that.

Let’s start with the ‘village idiot’. He is found in the forest/mountains where a group of highly trained samurais have got lost in on the way to the showdown with the evil Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira. He’s the only one who lives in the forest/whatever, but they find him caught in a trap up in a tree. He’s an idiot, but surely not so much of an idiot that he would get caught in one of, presumably, his own traps.

Moving on to the fight scene. The amount of ludicrous traps that are made and set seemingly overnight in a small village are ridiculous. Somehow, the said assassins and idiot manage to fight and kill around two hundred proficient swordsmen. This goes on for an insufferable amount of time. The final scene where Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira is confronted by the man set on killing him is a total let down. At the end of the film, there are only two men left standing; one assassin and the idiot.

Yawn.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Release Date: 10 May 2003

Tagline: From the ravages of war rises the ultimate assassin.

Main Cast:

Aya Ueto … Azumi

Kenji Kohashi … Hyuga

Azumi is a great looking film and very entertaining. The fight scenes are great, which is just as well because there’s plenty of them! And it’s pretty gory too.

The plot is kind of standard fare; nothing too complex. This isn’t an issue though, as I tend to think that this type of film needs an uncomplicated story.

It’s an interesting mix of history and comic book heroes, and I really liked that about it. It also has the best gay goth ninja magician that I’ve ever seen (“magician?” I hear you ask. It’s the roses. Where does he produce them from? My guess is from up his sleeves).

One thing that I couldn’t grasp though was whether it was supposed to be semi-comical. There are funny moments, and it seems to descend into madness towards the end. One of the funniest moments (to me) was the odd sounds made by the above mentioned gay goth ninja magician at the end. They’re reminiscent of Paul Burrows’ sounds of terror during the Bush Tucker Trials in “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!”.

Overall, Azumi is good entertainment if you like this genre of film.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Yimou Zhang

Release Date: 14 January 2005

Main Cast:

Takeshi Kaneshiro … Jin

Andy Lau … Leo

Ziyi Zhang … Xiao Mei (as Zhang Ziyi)

House of Flying Daggers is a visually stunning and thoroughly entertaining film. There really isn’t much for me to say about it other than if you don’t enjoy this, then there’s something wrong with you. The plot works very well. It’s not particulaly complex, but that was fine with me, as I didn’t want to struggle to follow a plot and find that I was not paying full attention to the visuals.

Watch this film. You won’t be sorry!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars