Just watched the blu of this last night, really fucking great.
This is a lazy comparison, but a lot of it felt like 300 set in a classic samurai film.
Really impressive for Miike to really flash his auteur credentials, showing that he is capable of a classic narrative and yet very subtletly mixing in his trademark style (my favorite being the wave of blood coming over the building when one of the assassins blows himself up). I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the twist at the end with the 13th assassin though, it pulls you out of the movie a bit and yet gives it a vibe of some sort of divine influence.
Comedy Quaddafi wrote:
For really though, am I the only guy who liked the first hour the most? As dope as all of the fighting was it was also a bit overwhelming for me. I thought the build-up and the story behind the villain, the assembling of the group and the whole tone of it was the best part. I wouldn't have been against it if that took up more screen-time.
I'm with this. Not the "liking the first hour the most" part but that there was definitely more room to get to know the protagonists better. Interesting that so many complained about Inglourious Basterds for this reason yet I've barely heard anyone mention that we get to know almost nothing about the assassins. But also maybe that was Miike's intention for their stories to fall in line with the code of the samurai. Who they are and their lives are meaningless; they are honorable men who exist only to serve and die for their masters. Have to think about this some more.