11 Rebels: long, bloody and uncompromising samurai action cinema

• Reviewed from the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival

Many filmmakers, both in and out of Japan, have sought to challenge the mythos around the samurai caste. The idealised image of the noble, selfless warrior has been met with a raised eyebrow by filmmakers like Kobayashi Masaki, whose classic film Harakiri (1962) decries the honour system of ritual suicide as pointless folly. The works of Akira Kurosawa have long been conscious of the social hierarchy that elevates the samurai and how that power is abused, even in the rollicking action of Seven Samurai (1954).  

11 Rebels by Shiraishi Kazuya, the opening film of Tokyo International Film Festival, is a slick and brutal period action piece made in this tradition. Perhaps the key distinguishing feature is how much it leans into the perspective of marginalised social classes from the mid 1800s – right on the cusp of the Meiji Restoration – as it builds its own parable about the misdeeds of the samurai class. It’s adapted from a story by the late Kazuo Kasahara, known for the Battles Without Honor and Humanity film series, which itself swerved from the glamourising trends of other yakuza films. 

11 Rebels is set during Japan’s Boshin War, a civil war between the new Imperial regime and the holdouts of the shogunate. Many nuances of the conflict may be lost on those unfamiliar with this history, but the film picks a specific emotional throughline in the exploits of a self-described ‘Suicide Squad‘ (like the David Ayer film of that name, 11 Rebels also pulls from Dirty Dozen), as a group of criminals is drafted to defend a key crossing from the Imperial army. This is to the benefit of the adolescent Lord of the Shibata Domain who, along with his (much older) advisors, is playing both sides in a conflict between the new Imperial army and an alliance of clans loyal to the old shogunate. The film is up front about the Shibata Domain’s imminent betrayal of this coalition of allied territories. It doesn’t matter to the criminals which side Shibata takes: they’re dead either way, their previous sentence is the stick while their potential exoneration is the carrot.  

Kazuya’s film is long, bloody and uncompromising in its presentation, even in its construction of the plot’s political background, which is told in intense voice over narration. The bigger picture is all but invisible to the protagonist Masa (Yamada Takayuki), a labourer who is sentenced to death for killing a samurai in retribution for the samurai raping his wife.  

He just wants to get out of there, and it’s satisfying to see the 11 Rebels of the title never really waver from their point of view that this is a purely transactional relationship. Masa is ready to sell the Shibata clan out at a moment’s notice. He never forgets where his death sentence came from, and that memory is stronger than some wishy-washy notion of duty to one’s Lord. Their plight is broken up with cuts away to the bigger political machinations which all demonstrate why that distrust is healthy – they’re simply pieces on a board, not even for the purpose of saving the land but buying time for the Lord’s corrupt negotiations. The film is always clear about who suffers as a result of those actions — women, the elderly, people with disabilities, neurodivergent and working class people all at the top of that list.

It’s interesting to see an action film shown primarily from the perspective of a man who clearly cannot fight – many of the battles of 11 Rebels mix hit-and-run guerilla warfare with some knockout one-on-one brawls (there are a handful of members of the ‘Suicide Squad‘ who truly can throw down). The result is often electrifying – swift action choreography punctuated by dozens of severed limbs and digits. There’s even the occasional Sanjuro-esque fountain of bloodspray, an oft-homaged effect which has come back around to feeling like a novelty. Kazuya often goes back to the same well to stage such fight scenes which means, even across different sequences, the action beats become repetitive and it begins to feel like diminishing returns. 

But 11 Rebels maintains its engaging exploration of the selfishness of the ruling class until its incredibly bitter end, which can’t help but impress with its commitment to being a complete bummer. The ideas of 11 Rebels are brought home with its brutal final act, one which cuts through the film’s often overwhelming historical context to show its supposed nobility as they really were.