Best movie ever!

The first must-see film of the year.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

I didn't notice any differences between them but I saw the original 20 yrs ago, so maybe I missed something. Maybe the plot about disallowing them passage through Owari land was different? I don't remember.There are 2 kinds of people. There is me, who enjoyed it most BEFORE they said "OK, enough of that." and put down their bows & arrows & explosives and came down from the rooftops to fight it out sword-to-sword. Then, there is seemingly every0ne else in the world, who love swordplay so much that it doesn't matter how silly it gets.

Kotaya is actually some kind of mountain god or smt, Upashi his loving one maybe the wife of the river god, he slept with her and got hanged on the tree for a lesson instead of being killed, with a god origin, Kotaya seems to be have an extraordinary physical strength which he had demonstrated in the battle and was being unable to killed

While most modern action movies feel bloated and overlong, with unnecessary subplots sprouting on every scene, 13 Assassins has the opposite problem. An epic Jidaigeki homaging Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the film follows veteran warrior Shinzaemon Shimada, entrusted with the task of eliminating a bloodthirsty powerful nobleman, untouchable by the law; Shimada assembles a team of fighters for the dangerous mission.Structure is simple. In the first act, 13 Assassins introduces the major players and displays the nobleman's atrocities (one moment in particular is truly disturbing, cementing the movie's R rating); in the second, Shimada and his men reach an isolated village to prepare the trap, while the nobleman's right-hand man Hanbei attempts to anticipate their moves. The last act is a bloody, pulse-pounding battle which, in spite of its length (over thirty minutes), maintains a great level of tension.While action is spectacular, characterization is lacking. Kôji Yakusho is excellent as Shimada, but only three or four of his men - including his nephew and a clownish bandit who is a clear homage to Seven Samurai's Kikuchiyo - get any kind of development; the rest are simply guys with swords. With deeper characterization, the last battle would have been even more powerful.7/10

Similar to the western story of 300, 13 Assassins tells the tale of 12 samurai & 1 forest bandit and their elaborate scheme to murder a sadistic and evil lord, Naritsugu (who you will grow to abhor - Goro Inagaki does an incredible job of portraying him). My impression upon the first hour and fifteen minutes of the film were pure brilliance. The film is filled with beautiful imagery that captures the essence of feudal Japan. There is a clear internal conflict within the characters regarding duty, honour, and what is right in a system so tightly dictated by a social code. The first 10-15 minutes of the battle scenes are well choreographed and incredible to watch.Now, here's where the "blur" part comes in. Typical of a 1 vs. 1000 fight scene, the one-on-one battle scenes are a blur. I watched with some level of confusion of who is who, and what's going on... and at that point, the film slips from sheer brilliance to cliché, reminiscent of 300. And then bam.... it's all done... I'll need to watch more samurai films to compare, but my overall opinion is the film shines in some scenes, but turns into a chaotic whirlwind more than halfway through... Still a good watch though.