Streaming Sleepers: 11 REBELS Rises Up To Bloody Expectations!
11 Rebels debuts on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD June 10 from Well Go USA.
I’m not done discovering Kazuya Shiraishi.
2018’s The Blood Of Wolves was an opportune venture about five years ago or so and it has to be one of the grittiest crime dramas I’ve ever seen. I still need to see the sequel, while catching onto last year’s period samurai drama, Bushido, proved ample in my view of Shiraishi’s work.
His latest, 11 Rebels, continues my thought pattern in that effort, conveying his ability to direct commanding dramatic performances and big scale set pieces, with complex and brutal action scenes to boot. It also comes with a few caveats, falling short in areas where the film would have been better delivered for its approach to the vengeance-versus-justice narrative.
Set against the backdrop of the Boshin War in the summer of 1868, 11 Rebels introduces us to Masa (Takayuki Yamada), a villager imprisoned forthwith and sentenced to be executed after avenging the rape of his wife by a Shibata clan samurai. Before his sentence can be carried out, however, the Shibata clan halts the execution, instead proffering acquittal for his crime along with nine other inmates in exchage for service to the clan.
Fierce life and death choices and brutal conflict await the makeshift squad as they stand guard to a portside fortress that serves as a key access point for the Northeastern coalition. Between Masa’s own impetulence and the expectant battles ahead, what they don’t know is that an even greater betrayal awaits that will assuredly tests their resolve before the imperial threats, arriving armed and ready to take the fort for their own.
Fans of classic samurai ensembles like Seven Samurai, 13 Assassins, Legend Of The Eight Samurai or the like will find something endearing in 11 Rebels to their liking. Written by Ikegami Junya with a script penned by Kazuo Kasahara sixty years earlier, the film has the makings of a gruesome, hard-hitting war drama and intense cast performances with a few complex characters that add to the intrigue.
Masa’s role definitely throws a few wedges in the scheme of things – a jaded villager who wants nothing to do with the Shibata clan or its cause but nonetheless decides that fighting the imperial army is all he has left. His turning point feels a little underwritten while the script tries to balance out its characterizations for each cast member. It’s workable for the film’s duration and can be reasoned in the course of its delivery, even if the brevity feels a tad lacking.
11 Rebels works best when it comes to its more glimmering moments and story points. Favorable moments are aplenty with Nakano, and co-star Takara Sakumoto whose character, Noro, a young ingenue who latches onto Masa as a brotherly figure, illuminates his presence upon discovering something at the fort beneath the soil, which the team eventually uses to their advantage.
Actors Onoe Ukon, Riho Sayashi, Shuhei Nomura, Amane Okayama, Hayate Ichinose and Chikara Motoyama also get their fair share of shining moments, even though some of these areas come off a bit more abridged in the long haul. Actor Sadawo Abe contributes an enticing eroteme as Shibata clan retainer, Mizoguchi, who is tasked with summoning the coalition’s suicide squad.
Action and stunt sequences are propulsive and exciting, amplifying the suspense as the story unfolds and the viewer observes the strategic mapping of our protagonists amid their standstill with imperial forces across a precarious bridge waiting to infiltrate. The climax ultimately finds Nakano battling a small army of forces in a finale that feels like it should have set something up even more grand and settling in its finale.
It is here that 11 Rebels leaves a bit more to be desired, albeit perhaps in its preferred deference to historical events instead of something with a little more bang. Otherwise, it’s a promising period piece full of explosive thrills, substance, and enough dramatic upheaval and redeeming moments to warrant ownership.
