Takashi Miike’s subject is violence. For this film, a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 original, we travel back to feudal Japan for our bloodbath. An evil lord, the Shogun’s sadistic young brother Naritsugu, is growing in power. As Naritsugu’s favourite activities are rape, slaughter, and shooting children in the back, bad times are clearly ahead. Someone must stop him – and so our small band of samurai set off, tracking Naritsugu and his men through the mountains, until they reach a small village where they set their booby traps and wait.

The period setting is nicely grim and muddy, the central performances are charismatic, and there are flashes of sick horror, but this film is really all about the final showdown. In a 45-minute frenzy employing swords, arrows, rocks, explosions and pointy bits of fence, the 13 samurai dispatch Naritsugu’s hundreds of men; it’s gripping, high-adrenaline and brilliantly choreographed stuff. Violence, in 13 Assassins, is chaos; but, for Miike it’s inevitable too, the state that everything ultimately tends to.