Jûsan-nin no shikaku (Takashi Miike, 2010)

Approaching Miike's films is like submitting to a lucky dip. He churns out at least three a year and for every breathtaking Audition there's guaranteed to be an idiosyncratically muddled stinker like The Happiness of the Katakuris. It therefore comes as a great relief that 13 Assassins is actually very conventional, and decently constructed to boot. It's only really The Seven Samurai with killing a psychotic noble instead of marauding bandits and six more heroes, right down to the last one being a disrespectful loose cannon a la Mifune, but the build-up is patient and the eventual 50-minute battle choreographed variedly enough that it just about escapes the debt.

6/10