13 Assassins

The beginning was strong. I found the opening of the story to be very well done and found the villain VERY, VERY interesting--the protagonists were also quite watchable in the beginning. I really thought I was in for a treat as far as how the protagonists were going to solve their problem. Unfortunately, the middle and end of the movie was frankly disappointing. The villain disappears for the most part and we're not really sure who the hero is. All they do is hunt and murder each other for the balance of the film, which of course, is unsustainable. We do get a sense of what the period was like and the violence was colorful (if you like that sort of thing) Violence alone, however, together with the one or two comedic scenes, was not enough to carry even an action film of this genre. The audience needs to feel more for the characters and we experience this only in the beginning of the movie getting lost somewhere around the end of the first quarter. Partially executed.