Well, I finally made it all the way through the server and looped around back to the beginning. I did buy this movie, FYI, and it's still just as glorious as it was when I first watched it. Twitch is now a completely different website. A lot of shit has changed over the decade. I'm gearing up to doing a full Best of the Decade list instead of my usual best of the year. It's just taking a long time.
Everything I originally said about this movie still stands. Originally posted 17 Oct 2011. 
I have been waiting for quite some time to see this one. I read about it on Twitch ages ago. If you're not familiar, Twitch is a great source of reviews and previews of Asian and festival films. I don't think I've mentioned it before on the blog, but I've been waiting for a new job to start for almost a month and a half now. On the one hand it's great because I get to watch a lot more movies than I had been, but on the other, it sucks because I have zero discretionary funds. That means no going to the theater and no buying new films. I either have to wait for it on Netflix, or beg Rob to get it. This is one of the latter.
It is the tail end of the Edo era. The age of samurai is waning and there has been peace under the Shogun. However, the Shogun's younger half-brother, Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), threatens that peace by being a complete psycho. Due to restrictions of honor, the Shogun can't have his brother 'taken care of', so one of his senior advisors takes the responsibility and contacts Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho), a well-respected samurai to take out the evil Lord. Shinzaemon puts together a team of 11 other samurai (they come across the last guy about halfway through the movie) to help him outwit his old schoolmate, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), Naritsugu's top general.
There is a ton of violence in this movie. Almost the entire last hour of the film is one extended battle scene, which is awesome. With 13 good guys it's a little difficult to remember all the character's names, but only about 5 of them have speaking parts so that helps. There are a lot of similarities between this and Kurasawa's Seven Samurai which I hope are intentional homages and not just an ultra-bloody ripoff.
I plan on buying this one at some point when I start getting paid again.
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