A bravado period action film set at the end of Japan's feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a war-torn future.
Direction
Miike's controlled chaos — 45 uninterrupted minutes of slaughter.
Practical Effects
Real swords, real blood, real exhaustion. No CGI safety net.
Production
Village built then destroyed. That's commitment.
Director
Takashi Miike
Koji Yakusho
Shinzaemon Shimada
Takayuki Yamada
Shinrokuro Shimada
Yūsuke Iseya
Koyata
Goro Inagaki
Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira
Kazue Fukiishi
Tsuya / Upashi
Hiroki Matsukata
Kuranaga
Tsuyoshi Ihara
Kuzuro Hirayama
Ikki Sawamura
Gunziro Mitsuhasi
Arata Furuta
Heizo Sahara
Sousuke Takaoka
Yasoyosi Hioki
Rokkaku Seiji
Mosuke Otake
Kazuki Namioka
Rihei Ishizuka
Koen Kondo
Yahachi Horii
Yuma Ishigaki
Gennai Higuchi
Masataka Kubota
Shoziro Ogura
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 45-minute battle was shot in two weeks with no storyboards. Miike improvised carnage daily.
A remake of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 film, but Miike inverted its politics: the original celebrated the shogunate, this one questions blind obedience to any power.
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