Dir: Shiraishi Kazuya. Japan. 2024. 155 minutes.
A unapologetically old-school Samurai motion rampage, 11 Rebels takes place towards the backdrop of Japan’s Boshin Battle in 1868, during which the New Imperial Military, loyal to the Imperial Court docket, confronted up towards Samurai ‘bandits’ preventing within the identify of the Shogunate. Many pages price of exposition fail to make clear the plot, a 3-D chess sport of conflicting pursuits, juggled loyalties and damaged oaths. Nevertheless it’s a robustly entertaining romp, full of swordplay, mass decapitations and improvised explosives.
A small military of extremely marketable heart-throb actors toplined by Yamada Takayuki and Nakano Taiga
The newest movie from Shiraishi Kazuya (The Blood Of Wolves, The Satan’s Path), 11 Rebels was tailored from an unproduced screenplay by the late Kazuo Kasahara (finest identified for yakuza thrillers comparable to Battles With out Honor and Humanity). It premieres because the opening movie of the Tokyo Movie Pageant, forward of a home launch by Toei on November 1st, the place the presence within the forged of a small military of extremely marketable heart-throb actors (toplined by Yamada Takayuki and Nakano Taiga) ought to assist its prospects. The movie has already offered upfront of its premiere to Effectively Go USA for North America and Splendid Movie for German-speaking territories.
To purchase time and a strategic benefit towards the New Imperial Military, the Shibata clan dispatches a motley crew of 11 males – a handful of Samurai and a vibrant assortment of criminals preventing to earn a pardon for his or her varied crimes – to defend a fort. Unbeknowns to them, the younger chief of the Shibata Area, a petulant brat with greater than a contact of the Joffrey Baratheons about him, is finally planning to facet with the Imperial forces.
It’s definitely stirring stuff, with its themes of redemption and the clawing again of honour for the least honourable dregs of society. However the movie does lean into themes of feminine victimhood and demonstrates some pretty antediluvian attitudes in the direction of incapacity, an element which may not endear it to worldwide audiences.
A propulsive opening sequence reveals Masa (Yamada Takayuki), a lowly labourer, sprinting by the city, shoving hapless consumers out of his manner. He hurries to consolation his deaf spouse, who has been raped by a drunken samurai. Crazed with anger, Masa hunts down the person and kills him. He’s swiftly captured and sentenced to demise, however a stranger – a developmentally disabled teen known as Noro (Takara Sakumoto) who’s satisfied that Masa is his brother – involves his rescue, slicing the ropes that bind him. Masa is recaptured however his execution is stayed by the chance to defend the fort alongside together with his fellow prisoners.
Those that survive, they’re instructed, will likely be pardoned. But when even one in every of them tries to flee, the deal is off for all of them. And anybody who decides to not take the provide will likely be moved to the neighbouring cell, the place the typhoid victims are housed.
They’re a combined bunch, these 11 rebels. One is behind bars for dishonest at cube, one is a priest with a style for younger girls. One prisoner was locked up for making an attempt to go away Japan with a view to research medication in Russia. One other was arrested for merely being too good-looking and catching the attention of the spouse of a samurai. On the different finish of the spectrum is a bruising monster of a person nicknamed ’Lower ’em down’, on account of his fondness for slaughtering folks and his ever-rising physique depend. An inscrutable aged man is given no backstory by any means till the final doable second, however his ability as a swordsman is a touch to his origins. And there’s a lady, Natsu (Sayashi Riho), imprisoned for arson after torching the home of the person who killed her child.
For probably the most half, the characters are thumbnail sketches, outlined by their crimes and a character quirk if we’re fortunate. However then the purpose of the movie shouldn’t be its nuance, however quite the explosive and violent prolonged motion sequences. And on that degree the movie delivers: it’s a handsomely mounted manufacturing that boasts strong work from the design departments and gives quite a lot of gorgeously rendered examples of Nineteenth-century Japanese structure onto which the copious blood is shed.
Manufacturing firm/worldwide gross sales: Toei Firm
Worldwide gross sales: Toei Firm, shi_takata@toei.co.jp
Producer: Muneyuki Kii
Screenplay: Ikegami Junya
Cinematography: Naoya Ikeda
Enhancing: Hitomi Katô
Music: Matsukuma Lenta
Most important forged: Yamada Takayuki, Nakano Taiga, Onoe Ukon, Sayashi Riho, Sakumoto Takara, Chihara, Seiji, Okayama Amane, Matsuura Yuya, Ichinose Hayate, Oyanagi Ryouta, Motoyama Chikara, Tamaki Hiroshi, Abe Sadawo