So Bad its Badass: Lone Wolf McQuade (Part 2)

See Part 1 here.

When we last left off, McQuade had left 3 extremely disposable people to go after Falcone. But first, he stops by his house to find the love interest Lola waiting for him with plenty of belligerent sexual tension on tap as she has started to clean up his absolute mess of a house since it looks like the start of an episode of Hoarders. After an insensitive remark, she tries to leave but he stops her and they have a sex scene in the mud outside his house.

No part of this is pleasant to contemplate.

After this, he forces his way into Falcone's domain and the two have a showdown at last. A bizarre, utterly confusing showdown as we see that the head of all organized crime south of the border is a midget in a wheelchair. The movie plays this completely serious and the two of them have a Holmes\Moriarty relationship.

They've faced each other in a battle of wits before.

He tells McQuade that Wilkes is the one running guns but he won't give him the information on where he is because he'd never betray a former business partner. Falcone swears that he's a third party in the whole endeavor and that he's only there to "watch the game". McQuade tells him that it may be a game to him, but if he finds out Falcone is involved he'll "have your little ass". 

Oh god, he's intrigued

Falcone disappears through a revolving door disguised as a wall and mockingly tells McQuade through a set of speakers that the informant Snow won't live through the night, before bursting into evil laughter, causing the audience to question their very sanity since the movie has treated all this with unbelievable sincerity. 

David Lynch wishes he could make things this weird.

McQuade tries to rush back to Dakota's place in his turbine powered Super Truck but he's too late, as Wilkes and his men arrive first. They severely wound Dakota with automatic gunfire while only pinning down Kayo in the kitchen. Wilkes finishes him off with by snapping his neck with his foot without even putting out his cigarette and has Snow gunned down. McQuade arrives hours later and tries to comfort a distraught Kayo.

"I'm pretty sure he didn't suffer"

McQuade heads back to the office where he finds out he's under Federal Indictment for his reckless lone wolf behavior and is put on paid probation. He returns home and has some quality time with Lola. Later that evening as he's in bed with Lola, Wilkes stops by to kill his dog before spraying down his house with automatic gunfire. So to recap at this point he has to avenge his daughter being attacked, his mentor killed and his dog being shot, all while on suspension for being a loose cannon lone wolf. Wilkes is really pushing it right now.

McQuade is met at his house by a black federal agent named Jackson who wants McQuades help against Wilkes. McQuade questions why he's not an utterly useless dickhead like the agent who indicted him and Jackson tells him that he knows what he's doing and is "not the token nigger around here".

Pictured: The only black man in the entire movie.

They fly around in his aircraft on aerial recon and find Wilke's large military airfield that he has in no way attempted to camouflage, probably under the assumption that nobody would dare fuck with David Carradine. McQuade and Jackson fly back and set out for the airfield with a bunch of federal agents under Agent Burnside, who rides McQuade's back and generally acts like an incompetent, bureaucratic dickhead. 

You can smell this guy's death coming

They do a quick recon of the field and bring their vehicles forward under the cover of night. Wilkes has an incredibly large operation with a military airfield, hundreds of men and his own cargo aircraft flying guns out to all the worlds terrorists.  McQuade has a bad feeling about it though, as he says that its all been too easy so far.

"You call that easy?!"

Burnside is running out of patience after having been repeatedly held back and despite McQuade trying to stop him, marches out with his men to order the entire crime syndicate military base to surrender on his bullhorn. 

The "Yell at people with a bullhorn" plan is oh for two so far in this movie

Burnside and his men are shot dead within seconds while McQuade, Jackson and Kayo are all repeatedly injured by gunfire. McQuade orders them out while he holds off the workers. He kills many of them before being dragged down by severe injuries and sheer numbers. Wilkes lands in his helicopter with Lola and starts repeatedly roundhousing the captive McQuade but Lola begs him to not do it this way so Wilkes has him buried alive in his Super Dodge Ram twenty feet below the ground as McQuade passes out from his severe injuries.  

So far he's doing better than any other Chuck Norris villain and that includes Satan.

The bad guys make two critical mistakes: They didn't take his beer and left him his keys. Kayo tries to rescue him but gets in a losing gun battle. Below the earth, McQuade heals himself by drinking from a six pack  he had in the truck like an alcoholic Popeye and pouring it in his wounds like it was the water from the Holy Grail. 

"Is...is that Pabst?"

He then puts the keys in the ignition and starts the vehicle, activating the turbocharger with SFX that implies that it was built for the MIB using advanced alien technology. Above ground they witness the ground crack open to reveal his flashing lights and siren as a heavenly choir sings over a triumphant musical score as his truck rises from its would be tomb, running down several men who were trying to kill Kayo, before McQuade guns them down with a sawed off shotgun. He then collapses on his truck and has a beer with Kayo and the inexplicably alive Jackson.

"Man we really fucked that one up"

With everyone at the airfield apparently dead or having left, the movie cuts to McQuade having a reprise of his earlier training session but too injured to complete it. After remembering the death of his dog, mentor and scumbag witness, he round houses a shed on his property to pieces. Falcone shows up at McQuade's exes house to tell him that Wilkes has taken his daughter as an "invitation". So that means that so far, Wilkes has put his daughter in the hospital, killed his mentor, killed his dog, tried to kill his truck and kidnapped his daughter. The man clearly has no concern for his own safety at this point.

"Oh god honey, the Dwarf is back"

McQuade heads down to Mexico but tells the others to stay behind. He stops for gas as villagers worship the the ground he's walking on, and it turns out that Jackson has beaten him down to Mexico with a truck full of ordinance as Kayo arrives from tailing McQuade. He grudgingly accepts their help and they hobble off to infiltrate Wilkes base. I do mean hobble since they all sustained life threatening injuries less than a day ago but were healed by the power of Beer.  They split up as they approach the base and McQuade infiltrates it while Jackson snipes guys with a crossbow.

"Aargh, this arrow in my side is instantly killing me, preventing me from shouting a warning"

McQuade finds his daughter with Lola (who he forgives easily) and starts to escort them out when he's discovered by a guard and alerts the whole base by shooting a guy in the face with his shotgun. This is when things go apeshit with guys streaming out of every door like it was Call of Duty 4 as our heroes absolutely ruin their shit with automatic weapons and copious amounts of explosives.

"There's Janeway, too. That's also Janeway. That's also Janeway!"

Kayo flubs it by letting the guy who kicked his ass earlier walk right up to him as he's reloading and kick him in the face. The guy asks if Kayo remembers him as he goes for his gun but Kayo is faster and shoots him dead before uttering probably the worst attempt at a one liner ever: "I never forget an asshole." Congrats Kayo, you have cemented yourself as someone who could pick an asshole out of a police lineup.

No..I just...no I'm so sorry

 Wilkes hops in a half track and starts spraying them with fire from an M60, hitting McQuade's daughter in the leg while pinning McQuade and Lola down.

"God I love this job"

Kayo keeps firing his infinite ammo LAW at henchmen while Jackson gets raked by gunfire. He has a "oh not again" reaction to being shot, as the bullets probably bounced off ones from earlier gunfights. He throws some grenades at guys who decided to one up video game enemies by hiding behind crates of explosives that are stacked in front of a couple tankers full of fuel.

"I REGRET NOTHIIINNNNGGGG!"

Wilkes continues to fire his M60 at McQuade as he hops in a bulldozer, starts it up and slowly drives at the halftrack Wilkes is firing from. Wilkes takes this as an obvious challenge and abandons the MG to hop into the drivers seat to start an incredibly slow game of chicken. The two collide but the bulldozer has way more oomph and it pushes the halftrack back until it crashes into a house. Wilkes gets out and in an unspoken agreement, he and McQuade put down their weapons for the fight that Wilkes has wanted for so long.

"I'm David Motherfucking Carradine"

At this point, I have to tell you that I have nothing that can contribute to how awesome this fight is. Its David Carradine and Chuck Norris actually beating the crap out of each other to an amazing Spaghetti Western soundtrack in fight choreography originally designed for a Chuck Norris \ Bruce Lee rematch. Chuck Norris for once is the underdog in a fight and its epic. Its the ultimate showdown of Kung Fu and Kickboxing. They put it on the movie poster it was so great.

Note: That's a nuclear detonation.

So while I can't do it justice, I can tell you that during the fight, McQuade's daughter gets punched in the face in Slow-Mo which gives McQuade the extra push to kick his ass. Wilkes gets laid out but manages to get an SMG which he uses to accidentally kill Lola. As she's dying, she tells him that Wilkes killed her husband and forced her to work with him. So as a final recap: Wilkes has put his daughter in the hospital, killed his mentor, killed his dog, tried to kill his truck, kidnapped his daughter, shot his daughter, punched the daughter in the face and killed the love interest. Its basically assisted suicide at this point as McQuade dodges SMG fire to throw a grenade at Wilkes who is shooting from inside a warehouse full of explosives.

Oh yeah, he's dead alright.

Falcone then shows up in a helicopter to harangue McQuade for "breaking their deal" of Falcone telling him where Wilkes was in exchange for him getting all the weapons. McQuade tells him that he merely assumed that there was an agreement before stealing his helicopter and leaving him for the Federales. Point to McQuade in this battle of wits.

And then they dropped him in a chimney in retribution for Tracy's death.

The movie ends with McQuade being given a commendation and him going to go see his ex-wife and daughter's new house. Before they can leave though, Kayo rolls up with his sirens on and tells McQuade there's a bank robbery gone bad in progress with the robbers having taken hostages. McQuade ditches his family to go kill more criminals and his wife commenting that he'll never change.

And then he was assumed into heaven.

So Bad its Badass: Lone Wolf McQuade (Part 1)

Lets get this out of the way: Chuck Norris is a meme for a reason. His movies were all based on a simple formula: Create a villain everyone wants to see get the shit kicked out of them,  have Chuck Norris kick the shit out of them, then roll credits. In at least half his movies, the villain doesn't even have any kind of fighting ability or credibility as a fighter, he's just a human heavy bag for Chuck Norris to manhandle like a gorilla trying to get a suitcase open. The guy has kickboxed to death hijackers, drug lords, crooked cops, Vietcong, Ninjas, Karate Serial Killers, and the Antichrist. If it has a face and isn't Bruce Lee, he's round housed its face off. He even got a TV show (Walker: Texas Ranger) so he could roundhouse everything from gangs to abusive dads to HIV on a weekly basis. Stephen Seagal tried to do the same thing with his career but it just wore out its welcome faster than Seagal himself at a buffet.

I was going to make a movie title pun before I realized Belly of the Beast had beat me to it.

What few people realize is that Walker: Texas Ranger was based on an early Norris movie called Lone Wolf McQuade ( LWM from here on out). Its a spiritual adaptation because of rights issues and that's frankly a shame since LWM is unique and utterly insane. So without further preamble, lets dive right into this delicious turkey!

We start the movie with our hero Texas Ranger McQuade watching Mexican bandits round up stolen horses and state troopers preparing to arrest them through his rifle scope.

Binoculars? He's not a Rockefeller.

The state troopers make their way down into the valley as the Bandits corral the horses, and McQuade shakes his head at the poor expendable red shirts before heading back to his truck  to grab his rifle, since he knows that as the main character he's going to have to clean this mess up sooner or later. He loads it with an armor piercing round and watches the scene unfold below him as the State Troopers confront the banditos.

Who are apparantly led by a living stereotype of Mexicans

The Frito Bandito sneers at their request for him to surrender, swears at them in Spanish and opens fire with his pistols at the troopers. The Troopers have the high ground, cover, assault rifles and started out already in position, so they are naturally utterly outclassed by a guy who's straight out of the Tea Parties image of Mexico. As one of them is gunned down we get a reaction shot from one of the troopers, who might be familiar to some of you.

Picture him fifteen years older, with a facial tattoo and his spirit crushed

Yes, that's Robert Beltran who would later play Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager in a marathon of Not Giving A Fuck Anymore. He's one of the State troopers who are getting a mud puddle stomped in their collective asses by the Banditos as McQuade calmly watches from a distance with his rifle.

"Lets see how this plays out"

The troopers surrender and are rounded up  as Frito Bantio rants at them, telling him they're trying to take the horses that he rightfully stole before randomly yelling "Andale!" because that's what Mexicans do right? The leader of the state troopers in a moment of genre blindness yells that they'll never get away with this. This of course backfires and he gets ready to cut off Chakotays head for being taller than him, so I guess the appeal to authority didn't work out.

Clearly someone who will respect the authority of your office. 

McQuade finally decides that maybe he should step in to help and starts blowing up trucks with his rifle. FB asks him why he's "messin with my cars amigo" as if he was just minding his own business before McQuade showed up and started messing up his stuff. McQuade informs him that he's a Texas Ranger and everyone reacts like its Jabba's throne room and he just told him he has a thermal detonator. 

FB tries to calm his men down and orders them all to lower their weapons. He tells McQuade to stand up so he can see him, and McQuade obliges but this causes one of FBs men to freak out and fire on him. 

Bullets and Chuck Norris have a gentlemen's agreement in his movies

So McQuade carefully lines up a shot and shoots the man dead. This prompts FB to stomp around before shooting the head of the troopers dead and taking Chakotay hostage. He yells that he'll kill him if McQuade doesn't throw down his weapon and come out unarmed as one of his men nervously tells him that nobody has ever messed with a Texas Ranger and lived. McQuade actually follows through though, and comes down from his rock with his hands up. FB has two of his men grab McQuade and he tells him about how a Texas Ranger once kicked his fathers teeth out and mockingly asks if McQuade is going to try it. So naturally McQuade kicks his teeth out. 

Never invite Chuck Norris to kick you in the face

He proceeds to disarm the men holding him and kill the rest with the signature Chuck Norris weapon: The autoaiming Ingram SMG. 

At least he only has one in this movie.

It doesn't matter what he's doing or how he's holding it, this weapon will never, ever miss. He even at one point spins around in a circle firing it with perfect accuracy despite the fact that everyone he hits is clearly several feet from where the rounds are impacting. Soon the only left alive is FB (begging for mercy before trying to grab a pistol) and McQuade tells him that he's just like his father. Which means that he either kicked the teeth out of FB's father when he was really young or he kicked an old man's teeth out. Neither would be out of character.

After Chakotay gets a little too overeager in thanking McQuade, we cut to him driving back to El Paso to witness his mentor Dakota's retirement ceremony.

He taught him everything he knows about being a Texas Ranger and his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices

They crack open some beers and their boss comes over to tell them how much he despises them before telling McQuade to see him in his office. Once there he gets the standard dressing down scene where the captain yells at him, saying despite the fact that he's awesome (he leads arrests for the entire nation), he's too dirty and unwholesome. The Captains ideal ranger is "a model citizen, a pillar of the community, he goes to church, he lives clean and has a loving wife and kids."

Ae you saying he doesn't live clean?

He then shows an editorial by a senator saying that McQuade is a walking symbol of police brutality before telling him that his "Lone Wolf days are over" and giving him a new partner: Chakotay, naturally. We finally get to learn that his name is Arcadio Ramos but everyone calls him "Kayo". McQuade storms out and the captain tells Kayo to follow him.

We are then introduced to our main villain for the movie Wilkes, played by the man himself David Carradine who seems to have insisted on just filming in whatever he was already wearing.

A dramatization of the producers casting Carradine

He's selling weapons to Cubans who want to overthrow Castro and they try to double cross him, jamming a pistol in his face. He's David Carradine, the white Shaolin Monk himself, so naturally some two bit Cubans don't stand a chance. The leader is killed by a roundhouse kick and his men are gunned down by the dozen armed men accompanying Wilkes. Talk about failing a perception check!

We go back to Kayo who's snooping around McQuades dumpy house but gets caught.

And yet this is an improvement over working for Janeway

He gets kicked out by McQuade and chased back to his car by the happiest looking Dog that's been dubbed over with random snarling. McQuade goes out back to go target shooting shirtless, and we keep cutting to the most overblown reaction shots from Kayo possible, trying to sell how badass he is for being able to hit a target from six feet away. This guy apparently cannot believe what he's seeing.

But then again he was captured by a snack food mascot. 

After his shirtless target shooting practice, he gets into Super Truck and heads off. Kayo tries to follow him, but McQuade hits the little red button on his truck and manages to get it up to about a hundred and twenty, leaving Kayo in a ditch as he crashes trying to keep up. He picks up his daughter from his ex wife's place and we get to meet Dead Meat his daughters boyfriend  who gushes over McQuade and how he received the Silver Star in the Marines before he was a Texas Ranger. His exposition delivered, he awkwardly shuffles off frame as McQuade takes his daughter to a horse show.

While he's working in the stables, he is watched by Wilkes and his boss.

What.

Then without a word, Wilkes leaves and the dwarf snears in triumph.

What.

Then the scene ends. No explanation, not even a hint as to what the fuck that just was and we're off to the romance sub plot. McQuade saves a woman on a runaway horse and it turns out she's the widow of a wealthy man who died under mysterious circumstances. After much small talk, they head over to an exhibition fight where Wilkes is beating the shit out of random people in a boxing ring. He sees McQuade and tries to goad him into a fight but McQuade refuses as that god damn dwarf watches.

Wilkes takes offense to this and has some goons beat the shit out of  Kayo while McQuade watches.

"Lets see how this plays out."

Dakota tries to intervene but is knocked unconcious and McQuade decides that he should probably step in before they start working over the love interest with a tire iron. He works over the redneck mooks with ridiculous ease, establishing dominance over the secondary characters. One of the mooks also learns why a beer bottle is a terrible weapon, as McQuade grabs his hand and crushes his hand into the bottle until it shatters inside his grip.

Number one in police brutality three years running

Wilkes comes over and tries to pick another fight but the love interest steps between them and stops the fight before it can begin. They walk away and Kayo asks why they aren't you know, arresting the guys who assaulted two law enforcement agents. McQuade tells him that if he locked up everyone he got into a fight with, he'd have half of the county in jail. Which is probably not hyperbole knowing this character, but this whole thing somehow causes him and Kayo to bond while the Dwarf looks on and laughs in triumph.

Seriously movie, what the fuck?

McQuade goes out to dinner with the Love Interest who has a reputation as a black widow since her husband died under mysterious circumstances but she wins McQuades heart by backhanding a guy off his feet Love, Chuck Norris Style. While this is happening, his daughter is making out with DeadMeat when they see what is supposed to be an army convoy ambushed by men pretending to be the police.

"Look Phil, all I'm saying is we might have over done it on the flares"

They get in their car to get help but suddenly headlights from another car turn on beside them. Either the car was parked there since before they were making out or it managed to sneak up completely unnoticed like a Predator Lincoln Continental. I am of course going to assume the latter. So DeadMeat sees two men armed with SMGs and confronts them with a tire iron and is quickly removed from the movie. McQuades daughter freaks out and hides in a corner as the Predator Continental pushes the door closed and shoves the car over the edge of a cliff without making a single sound before slinking away.

"Iwo Jima, Cambodia, Beirut. Drawn by heat and conflict. He's on safari."

McQuade gets the call and after making sure his daughter is alright in the hospital, goes to investigate the scene. Unfortunately for him, the feds have arrived and tell him to shove off since its under their jurisdiction. So naturally he gets to work on the case with Kayo. He tries to get information by calling up random military officers which doesn't get him anywhere but luckily Kayo has a post it note with codes that get him into the central classified computer system of the entire US military. The shipment contained a wide array of military weapons from rifles to miniguns to 105mm towed arty to "Chi-Com Rifles". Lacking any other leads, he decides to go shake down the local scumbag and see what he knows with his side kicks Kayo and Super Ram Charger.

"When I am not around the truck is in charge"

They go after the general all purpose dirt bag of the county named Snow who is hiding out in a textile facftory. Super Ram charges through some gates to allow for some good old police brutality to unfold as Kayo beats a random man  while McQuade tells him that he's getting the hang of being a Ranger. They confront Snow and he tries to shoot them.

This plan fails for obvious reasons

After Kayo and McQuade shoot his guards to death, Snow makes a break for it in his truck while McQuade jumps on board. After sliding around for a few minutes while Snow tries to shoot him with an empty gun, before he crashes into a tanker full of gasoline as McQuade rolls off. As the truck fills with gasoline, Snow keeps trying to start it. Which is of course, a terrible combination.

"Come on, start you piece of-AAAAAAH"

McQuade rushes in to save Snow and gets him clear before the entire tanker explodes. Rather than say, arrest him and bring him into the station, he instead brings him to his mentor's house. While there, Snow tries to pull a hidden knife on Dakota but gets his arm snapped like a twig for the attempt and Dakota fires McQuades Ingram at him until he starts talking. Falcone is getting his hands on as many weapons as possible and selling them to terrorists and dictators all over the world. McQuade leaves Snow with his mentor and rookie partner for protection. Naturally, this means at minimum two out of three must die.

Redshirts playing Poker.

So tune in for part two to see who lives, who dies and who gets their face kicked off and just what the fuck is the deal with that midget.

Movies That Kick Ass: 13 Assassins

 To sum it up quite simply: 13 Assassins is a movie that manages to combine excellent character drama with batshit insanity. Its filled to the brim with conflicts over honor, duty, loyalty and the nature of oaths. Also, it has enough dead bodies to a fill an Olympic sized swimming pool and more spike traps than a Dungeon Masters Guide.

Indeed they are.

The story begins with a house elder committing Sepuku in protest against Lord Naritsugu. Lord Naritsugu is basically evil incarnate but is protected because he's the half brother of the shogun. This allows him to get away with extreme acts of over the top villainy in every scene he's in without even slowing down once. This is a man who will go from zero to rape in 1.5 seconds, then mock the husband of the rape victim, then kill him while he tries to console his wife, behead his dead body, then insult his dead body to his wife's face.

I'm not a rape expert but I think this is considered a definite Faux Pas

And that's just what he does to warm up.

We follow Sir Doi as he ponders just what to do about Lord Dickhead. The guy is bad enough on a day to day basis (What with all the atrocities) but the shogun is about to elevate him to a senior position in which he'll have actual power over the whole of Japan, which terrifies the shit out of everyone. Sir Doi decides that the little shit simply must die. To do this, he goes to the Samurai Shinzaemon and tells him that he wants him to kill Lord Dickhead before he can ascend to a position in the government. To reinforce how much this man must die, he shows Shinzaemon the good lord's handiwork: The daughter of a peasant leader who rebelled because Naritsugu taxed his subjects so much they could barely afford their own food.

Oh god what.

Yeah, Naritsugu kinda made her into a human sex toy by cutting off all her limbs so she'd fit in a travelling case and removed her tongue so he wouldn't have to listen to her. That's pro level evil, not your amateur stuff you often see. As the finishing touch, he leaves her to die face down in the street in the rain rather than giving her any kind of merciful death. Because he was bored.

Shinzaemon asks what happened to her family and she answers using a brush in her mouth while bleeding from her eyes because of how much trauma she's sustained.

Shinzaemon in seeing this absolutely gut punching display has about the reaction to this much human misery and evil that you would expect.

"Yeeesss"

Or shit, he's overjoyed that this level of evil exists.  See, Shinzaemon wants a meaningful death but that's basically impossible in the era he lives in. Lord Dickhead gives him the perfect opportunity to die an honorable death against not only superior odds but in a mission to kill someone who is basically pure evil. We then get to meet Shinzaemons opposite number, the Samurai Hanbei as Lord Dickhead is casually practicing his archery.

Magnitude 8.3 on the Dickter Scale

...on the family of the clan leader who comitted suicide as protest to Naritsugu's wanton brutality....

Hanbei is basically a slave to the oaths of loyalty he has to Naritsugu and when he tries to get Naritsugu to stop trying to finish off the entire family, Lord Dickhead throws it back in his face saying that Samurai must obey their lord even to the point of dying for them. This sets up the central conflict between Shinzaemon and Hanbei and their different ideas of honor. Hanbei's loyalty is to a Lord, Shinzaemon believes that a lord must earn loyalty. Both men know that they will be fighting over the life of Naritsugu as he travels back to his home territory the capital.

We get to meet 11 of the other assassins, which includes Shinzaemons nephew Shinrokurō who is bored of the samurai life and has taken up gambling. We learn that Shinzaemon is a highly skilled gambler in both games and life. He always takes the long shot bet and that's what he plans to do against Naritsugu. His plan is to politically block his path, forcing him through a specific town that they plan to buy out and fortify. So they set off and pick up a bizarre hunter named Kiga Koyota.

Naritsugu and Hanbei meanwhile find their path politically blocked by a local lord whose Son Naritsugu beheaded earlier. Naritsugu is so arrogant he almost gets his face shot off right there for trying to force the blockade single handidly.

I'm pretty sure you'd need a silver bullet or a piece of the true cross anyway.

Hanbei says that his lord can endure a little humiliation if it means maintaining his safety since in a year he will be second in command of the country. Naritsugu has him utterly pegged psychologically though and uses his strict codes of honor against him to get him to do whatever the fuck he wants.

Meanwhile, Shinzaemon is fortifying the heck out of a town and turning it into a trap. They know it's a gamble because Naritsugu has over 200 samurai as escorts, but to them killing him is the only honorable thing to do. A conflict is utterly unavoidable at this point and you look at the time as the final battle begins.

Holy. Shit.

There ain't any excessive denouement either, the rest of the movie is all battle.

So the assassins have fortified their town into a total death trap and left a token group of civilians behind to maintain appearances when Hanbei scouts it. As he's escorting his lord through the town, he sees the villagers escaping into the forest and sees swords\arrows placed in strategic locations and realizes that he's been led into a trap.

Its at this point that the movie loses its fucking mind. Maybe you realize that when the so foot high spring loaded spiked walls slide in, maybe you realize that when they unleash flaming livestock on them.

Hope you like your steaks rare and angry

But no matter what point you realize it, this movie just became utterly over the top.

Shinzaemon traps them in the town via a series of spiked walls (complete with land mines) while simultaneously blowing up the only bridge out of town. All the buildings have been filled with spikes so they can't get through them and there's catwalks up top so the Assassins can get around with ease. The entire town is now a D&D death trap and Shinzaemon and co give them a proper greeting, informing them they're about to get fucking arrowed.

Its basically the Edo equivalent of the shower scene as the assassins shoot arrows by the dozens into the samurai bodyguards while wild man Kiga just hurls gigantic rocks at everyone with his sling. The bodyguards find that any possible way out is generally a trap and generally quite explosive, bringing entire buildings down on their heads. After this onslaught, Shinzaemon declares that they should end these "petty tricks" and get down to business.

He then officially declares his intentions.

Now, they've got the high ground and prepared defenses. So logically, they should man those and cut the lesser samurai to pieces as they try to climb out of the trap. They still have explosives and arrows to flush them out, so we should see a highly tactical battle in which-

"BANZAI MOTHERFUCKERS!"

Or they all jump into heaping crowds of mooks to mix it the fuck up. From here on out, this is going to be a battle god damn royale. There's so much action and so many great moments that from here I can only give you the highlights. Basically all the bodyguards are utterly inexperienced because it's a time of relative peace and are absolutely terrified of these mad men who have trapped them in the Edo Tomb of Horrors while the Assassins are humanoid typhoons because of either superior training, actual field experience, willingness to throw out any notion of a fair fight or in the case of Kiga: Pure street rat crazy.

This guy must smell amazing

The bodyguards find that no matter which way they attempt to turn to escape from this onslaught of Samurai and Crazy Guy with Rock. Often though, Lord Dickhead will actually run off in directions that he knows are going to be traps because he's actually that much of a dickhead and is having a great time watching all his men die trying to save him from the ambushes.

This is not even remotely a fair fight

Hanbei has to keep running around and coming to his rescue, since he's the only Samurai on his side who's worth a damn. He's having to bust his way through spring loaded falling spike walls to stand in front of a guy who is actively putting himself into danger all the time. This is a guy who can deflect arrows off hand with his sword and make stone cold killers back the fuck off.

The dreaded Jazz Hands defense.

Meanwhile, all the Samurai who aren't Hanbei are getting slaughtered with swords, spears, fire, explosives and large rocks but they begin to wear the assassins down. While they're an absolute wrecking crew, it seems they didn't do enough endurance training in the off season and its starting to cost them. One by one, sheer numbers start taking their toll and they start dying against the samurai bodyguards. Several are dramatically run through, others start collapsing dead from sheer blood loss from all the little lucky hits that made it through. One takes his own life with the gunpowder he was carrying, taking another man with him.

Fact: The human body contains two hundred and fifty gallons of blood.

While Hanbei keeps trying to reassure his men that they totally have this thing won if they just stay focused, Lord Naritsugu tells him that he finds this whole conflict amazing and they should totally usher in an age of non-stop war when he's raised to second in command. Hanbei is absolutely horrified by this but is stupidly loyal so he says nothing even though he's past the point that most people would go "Fuck it, you can have him".

Both sides start running out of Samurai due to various slashing related incidents, with Hanbei and a couple men left defending the lord as they manage to finally escape the town but find Shinzaemon and his nephew waiting for them. Shinzaemon tries to convince Hanbei to leave the gigantic dickhead to die but Hanbei, while acknowledging his Lord's dickhead status, swears that whatever else happens, he is a Samurai who will obey and die. The two men prepare for a duel and Shinzaemon comments that Hanbei was always his superior in the dojo but this is a real fight before promptly kicking a shitload of mud into Hanbei's face and cutting him down with ease.

So of course Lord Dickhead just casually kicks his head around.

This guy has truly raised the fucking bar

Shinzaemon tells Naritsugu that his life ends here because of all his atrocities but Naritsugu amazingly thinks that he has a chance against a stone cold motherfucker like Shinzaemon, who even lets him get a free shot in between insults (Since he wants to die) before cherry tapping him with his sword. Naritsugu dies after blubbering in the mud begging for someone to save him from the pain while Shinzaemon just looks on Like a Boss before beheading him. Shinzaemon dies of his basically self inflicted wound. The only survivors of the battle are his nephew and Kiga who apparantly possesses a Demon Healing Factor that will never be properly explained to anyone who is not Japanese. 

Walk it off pansy!

The end credits helpfully inform us that Lord Naritsugu was reported to have died from a fever, which requires a bit more explanation than one of the characters being a Japanese Demon. 

13 Assassins is an incredibly entertaining movie, both as a drama and as an action movie. I've done it very little justice with this skimmed over account since as mentioned previously, the final battle is a whopping 40 minutes long and not a single minute of that is wasted. Its a marathon of action that doesn't get old no matter how many guys you see cut apart. So go check it out from a library, Netflix it or buy it from Amazon for the sake of shameless internet writers who could use a buck or two to pay for Netflix.