‘11 Rebels’: Tokyo Review

Dir: Shiraishi Kazuya. Japan. 2024. 155 mins.

A unapologetically old-school Samurai action rampage, 11 Rebels takes place against the backdrop of Japan’s Boshin War in 1868, in which the New Imperial Army, loyal to the Imperial Court, faced up against Samurai ‘bandits’ fighting in the name of the Shogunate. Many pages worth of exposition fail to clarify the plot, a 3-D chess game of conflicting interests, juggled loyalties and broken oaths. But it’s a robustly entertaining romp, packed with swordplay, mass decapitations and improvised explosives.

A small army of highly marketable heart-throb actors toplined by Yamada Takayuki and Nakano Taiga

The latest film from Shiraishi Kazuya (The Blood Of Wolves, The Devil’s Path), 11 Rebels was adapted from an unproduced screenplay by the late Kazuo Kasahara (best known for yakuza thrillers such as Battles Without Honor and Humanity). It premieres as the opening film of the Tokyo Film Festival, ahead of a domestic release through Toei on November 1st, where the presence in the cast of a small army of highly marketable heart-throb actors (toplined by Yamada Takayuki and Nakano Taiga) should help its prospects. The film has already sold in advance of its premiere to Well Go USA for North America and Splendid Film for German-speaking territories.

To buy time and a strategic advantage against the New Imperial Army, the Shibata clan dispatches a motley crew of eleven men – a handful of Samurai and a colourful assortment of criminals fighting to earn a pardon for their various crimes - to defend a fort. Unbeknowns to them, the young leader of the Shibata Domain, a petulant brat with more than a touch of the Joffrey Baratheons about him, is ultimately planning to side with the Imperial forces. 

It’s certainly stirring stuff, with its themes of redemption and the clawing back of honour for the least honourable dregs of society. But the film does lean into themes of female victimhood and demonstrates some fairly antediluvian attitudes towards disability, a factor that might not endear it to international audiences.

A propulsive opening sequence shows Masa (Yamada Takayuki), a lowly labourer, sprinting through the town, shoving hapless shoppers out of his way. He hurries to comfort his deaf wife, who has been raped by a drunken samurai. Crazed with anger, Masa hunts down the man and kills him. He is swiftly captured and sentenced to death, but a stranger – a developmentally disabled youngster called Noro (Takara Sakumoto) who is convinced that Masa is his brother – comes to his rescue, cutting the ropes that bind him. Masa is recaptured but his execution is stayed by the opportunity to defend the fort along with his fellow prisoners.

Those who survive, they are told, will be pardoned. But if even one of them tries to escape, the deal is off for all of them. And anyone who decides not to take the offer will be moved to the neighbouring cell, where the typhoid sufferers are housed.

They’re a mixed bunch, these 11 rebels. One is behind bars for cheating at dice, one is a priest with a taste for young women. One prisoner was locked up for trying to leave Japan in order to study medicine in Russia. Another was arrested for simply being too handsome and catching the eye of the wife of a samurai. At the other end of the spectrum is a bruising monster of a man nicknamed ’Cut ’em down’, on account of his fondness for slaughtering people and his ever-rising body count. An inscrutable elderly man is given no backstory whatsoever until the last possible moment, but his skill as a swordsman is a hint to his origins. And there’s a woman, Natsu (Sayashi Riho), imprisoned for arson after torching the house of the man who killed her baby.

For the most part, the characters are thumbnail sketches, defined by their crimes and a personality quirk if we’re lucky. But then the point of the film is not its nuance, but rather the explosive and violent extended action sequences. And on that level the film delivers: it’s a handsomely mounted production that boasts solid work from the design departments and provides a variety of gorgeously rendered examples of 19th-century Japanese architecture onto which the copious blood is shed.