Azumi is the only girl in a group of ten orphans who have been trained as assassins in a remote area of Japan. They have been prepared for a mission to kill various warlords and when they are told that his mission is about to start they are overjoyed… then they learn there is a final test; each is told to pair up with their closest friend before being ordered to fight to the death! Those who survive, which obviously includes the eponymous Azumi, set off on their mission. The mission is everything; they are ordered not to get involved when a village is massacred as the attackers aren't their targets. Once they start killing their targets the others warlords hire their own killers to hunt down the assassins. By now some of those assassins are starting to question their mission and get involved with other people.If you are looking for realism this will probably disappoint you but if you want lots of full-on, over-the-top samurai action then this should be just the ticket. The action is stylish in a way that seems to introduce elements of Chinese Wuxia films to traditional Japanese samurai action. The fights are numerous, exciting and pretty bloody. Seventeen year old Aya Ueto does a fine job as Azumi; she makes a great protagonist as she dispatches goodness knows how many villains while still looking cute! The rest of the cast are decent too. Among these the most memorable is Joe Odagiri, plays Bijomaru; a camp but highly proficient swordsman who has been employed to kill the assassins. While the action is mostly exciting there are some shocking, somewhat disturbing, moments. Overall I'd recommend this to anybody wanting over-the-top samurai action without requiring anything too deep.These comments are based on watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles.

AZUMI is a wonderful Japanese period swordplay epic that provides a pleasant contrast to the Chinese wuxia movies loved by cinema fans across the globe – popular titles like HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and HERO. AZUMI is similar to these movies and at the same time a lot different: it possesses a great deal of verve and vitality of the kind you'd find in a Takeshi Miike movie and it's more action packed and colourful than any of those movies. This is a gory, blood spurting account of the assassin's creed, mixing in a bunch of assorted and despicable villains and all manner of varied battles and characters to keep things moving along nicely.The film begins with one of the most shocking twists I can remember, a touch that allows us to immediately empathise with the protagonists involved. From then on in, characterisation grows, while a series of vicious, expertly-choreographed battles keep the viewer enthralled. As the young heroine of the title, Aya Ueto is impossibly beautiful and impossibly deadly; a fitting combination. She's matched by a cast of skilled professionals, all of them playing familiar types – the aged and ruthless master, the effeminate and hateful villain, the monkey-like wizard.The movie is a visual treat and the colour palette provides a vibrant alternative to that seen in HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. Action-wise, the fights are thoroughly engaging and fully exciting, with excellent use of the camera to get across the adrenaline rush – Kitamura's bravura 360 spin around the protagonists as they fight on a beam at the climax, for instance. The last half hour of the movie is a huge pitched battle against hundreds of opponents, and it never bores for a second. A sequel followed two years later. This is what movie-making is all about!

Reading some of the reviews I just can't understand how anyone can give this anything higher than 6. It's a hack'n'slash movie from 2003 without any blood? People are dying by having the backside of a sword hitting their stomach! By someone parrying their blow! If it was made in the 70s fair enough but really. Going through a 2 hour long movie off people "dying" by the sword, without a sword getting bloody except for maybe every third of the fight scenes? That just bothers me greatly. Do not waste your time on this. If you want a good Samurai action-packed movie I recommend "13 Assassins"

The movie kind of left me pretty skeptic from the very start. I mean, if this guy is so concerned with making peace, why on earth would he train 10 assassins to go and kill a bunch of people? It's not the smartest way to make peace I've heard of... And then he tells them to kill each other so only half is left. And they obey, like mindless zombies. Which is really odd because in the previous scene it was obvious they were all a bunch of fun loving and innocent kids. And then soon afterward they're not traumatized in any way, in stead they're joking around and laughing like the rest of us. Not to mention the girl later on who almost gets raped and has all her friends killed before her very eyes. But she just smiles and carries on like nothing happened.The fight scenes were OK. But they got pretty tedious after a while. 2 hours and 20 minutes is pretty long for a movie with no plot to talk about. And you never really knew who you should want to win, because pretty much all the characters were ass holes anyway. There was nothing that made the 'bad guys' seem like bad guys. And there was nothing heroic about the heroes either. So basically the movie was just a an excuse to have a bunch of guys get killed on screen with some nice action choreography slapped on top. The only obviously bad guy in the movie was that white clad dude. But he was also the weakest character, simply a typical anime stereotype.I give the movie a six out of ten, feeling pretty generous. Because I did still enjoy the action, and there were some touching moments, however surreal they felt.