The samurai period drama is a rite of passage for many Japanese filmmakers, but Kazuya Shiraishi has followed up his first foray into the genre by heading straight back for more. Whereas the director¡¯s ¡°Bushido,¡± released earlier this year, was a character-driven drama that just happened to feature a bit of swordplay, ¡°11 Rebels¡± leans more on spectacle. The opener for this year¡¯s Tokyo International Film Festival, it delivers the thrills of an old-fashioned crowd pleaser ¡ª which makes sense, in that it¡¯s based on a 60-year-old screenplay by the late Kazuo Kasahara.
The screenwriter, best remembered for 1970s yakuza series ¡°Battles Without Honor and Humanity,¡± reportedly destroyed his work after it was rejected by a studio boss who didn¡¯t care for the ending. However, the plot survived, and has been adapted by Shiraishi regular Junya Ikegami. He gives the story an unmistakably modern treatment, while taking a light touch to a particularly knotty period in Japanese history: the Boshin War that led to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.
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