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 — 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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