Dir. Takashi Miike
Staring: Hideaki Ito, Kōichi Satō, Yusuke Iseya, Takaaki Ishibashi
A gunman (Ito) gets drawn into a war between two gangs, the
red dressed Heike and the white dressed Genji, who are at war over the town of
Yuta, Nevada, in this Japanese homage to the classic spaghetti westerns.
Takashi Miike tends to always be in work on a something. As
of right now he has 98* directorial credits, which is impressive for someone
who started in 1991. Most of this is due to his insane output of films, usually
3 or 4 films per year, with some music videos and television work thrown in as
well. But one of the most interesting things about his career is how varied his
filmography is. He has made horror films like Audition and Gozu, over the top
action films like Full Metal Yakuza or the Dead or Alive trilogy, movies that
break taboos and push the boundaries of good taste like Visitor Q and Ichi the
Killer, dramatic Samurai films like Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai or the
extremely well received 13 Assassins. and family friendly like his superhero Zebraman,
Yatterman, or the fantasy film The Great Yokai War. This film was one of four that he directed in
2007, and at first it’s odd that Miike would make a western, but then again
when you look at all the genres he has tackled and the diverse nature of his
filmography it does start to make sense. The story is typical spaghetti western
stuff, and in terms of action it excels. The movie’s main concern is looking
cool and featuring cool characters, which it does. But it is a good
tribute/homage to the spaghetti western eras, mainly Django and the Man with No
Name films, but the most surprising thing was the post script is straight out
of Django Meets Sartana. But the good thing about the film is that it is able
to tell its own story without feeling redundant of what came before, mainly due
to Miike’s creative insanity giving the movie a fresh feel. Once you know the
set up you know how things are going to play out, and when things are revealed
about characters later in the movie you aren’t surprised, but it doesn’t feel
like something you’ve seen before. This might be due to the novelty of a
Japanese cast, and how the film transposes the events of the Genpei War to a
western setting.
The biggest problem (and most frequent complaint from other
viewers) about the film is caused by the choice to have the Japanese cast
deliver their lines in English. While some of the cast does a decent job, some
are not as good as others and it causes some confusion. I understand the reasoning behind it, since
most of the spaghetti westerns this film is an homage were in English, but
really the film suffers due to it and it would probably be better had the film
be shot with the actors working in the native tongue and dubbing it into
English in post production, just like what was done with the original spaghetti
westerns. It is interesting that in the Japanese release version, while all the
original actors dub themselves, Quentin Tarantino’s character Pringo is dubbed
my Miike himself. But the funny thing about the movie is that even with the
dialogue problems, Quentin Tarantino is still not the best actor in movie. The
leads of the film seem more confident at acting in English than he does, which
is a great achievement due to them reciting lines that the learned phonetically.
The lead of the movie is Hideaki Ito as the heroic
gunfighter. He comes into town in kind of the Django/Man with No Name style
(which makes sense due to this movie being an homage to those films), and the
ending where he finally cuts loose and starts to fight is very cool and very
well shot. Other than that he is just mainly roaming around town learning about
other characters and looking cool. Yusuke Iseya plays Yoshitsune, the leader of
the Genji, and he is really good in the role. He and Ito are probably the best
in terms of acting through the language barrier, and Iseya gives his character a
bit of swagger like a rock star that makes him very memorable. His fight with
the gunfighter at the end of the film is very cool, and different.
While I can’t say that Sukiyaki Western Django is a great
film, since the positives about it don’t outweigh its flaws. But the funny
thing about it is even though I don’t think that it is one of Miike’s best
movies, it would probably be one of the easiest of his films to recommend to
someone that has never seen due to it not being overly extreme in terms of violence
and sexual content. But it’s still pretty entertaining, and the climatic action
scene is awesome. It’s a mixed bag.
*granted, some of his credits are music videos, but still
his output for any year is impressive. He usually gets out at least 2 or 3
feature length productions, which is incredible. The quality of the films is
another matter all together.
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