13 Assassins is one of the most violent movies I have ever seen. It is chock full of severed limbs and gushing blood, gore-clotted katanas and mounds of lifeless bodies. Not that I think that's a bad thing, mind you. I don't like watching movies where innocent people are hurt or killed, but I find the (fictionalized) sight of professional warriors relentlessly hacking away at each other to be as refreshing as a cup of morning coffee.

Actually, there are a few scenes of innocent people being hurt or killed in this movie too. In a movie this violent, there's bound to be some collateral damage, but rest assured- every innocent death in this epic samurai fight-fest is repaid a thousandfold in the bloodbath that follows. Actually, so many bad guys get sliced into mincemeat in the final battle that you have to wonder why Japan didn't go on to become a utopian society, since everyone with a touch of evil in him was presumably killed in this one fight, leaving Japan safe for the decent folk.

I'm being facetious, of course, but this is actually a top-notch samurai flick, and almost entirely free of the anime influence I have personally found so irritating in most recent movies of this type. There's one character who probably isn't really human, and that's more like an anime than a traditional samurai movie. However, they handle it in a subtle way, so it doesn't distract and ends up being pretty cool. If you like samurai movies the way they used to make them, this one is for you.