11 REBELS

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. As the Shibata clan, the old shogunate, and the new government clash, their heroic struggle unfolds in one of the most ferocious conflicts during the Boshin War portrayed in an unrelenting, at times brutal, period action film that leans into the perspective of marginalized 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.