Sukiyaki Western Django

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Horrorphile - October 2008

Sukiyaki Western Django

October 16th 2008 02:38

It’s a little tenuous to review this movie within the context of my Pleasure of Nightmares, but I couldn’t resist, since it’s directed by one of my favourite horror directors Takashi Miike, and it’s certainly oneiric and gloriously violent.

Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) is a wild and bloody hoot! It’s one of Miike’s most accomplished and ambitious movies to date; it swings and spits and slices and smashes and re-invigorates a classic genre with more stylistic chutzpah than you can hurl a dead rattlesnake at.

The movie looks and moves like a kind of Manga-Western-Samurai hybrid, unlike anything you’ve seen before. In a perverse kind of way it would make a great double whammy combo juxtaposed with Jim Jarmusch’s monochromatic existential mutant Western Dead Man (1996) … which I must get around to reviewing some day!

Hideaki Ito as the Gunman

Sukiyaki Western Django is a strange kettle of fish, full of hyperbole and high contrast, as lush on the eye as its narrative is impenetrable. It’s probably the most convoluted Western I’ve ever seen (or tried to follow), yet every scene seems perfectly in place and its arc is as smooth and single-minded as the hard arrow from a crossbow.

Yusuke Iseya as gang leader Yoshitsune

The screenplay is Masa Nakamura and Miike and its an epic tale of blood, lust and greed, in classic Spaghetti Leone style (a director’s whose panoramic influence Miike is clearly wearing on his blood-soaked sleeve). Set several hundred years after the battle of Dannoura in 1185 it tales the tale of the Minamoto and Taira gangs who are at war. They face off in a town named Yuta, Nebada, at the same time as a darkly-clad, deadly Gunman arrives and each posse try and lure his lethal services. But of course, the Gunman has his own agenda.

Kaori Momoi as Ruriko

Sounds a little like Yojimbo (the Kurasawa movie that inspired Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars), and indeed it does owe a lot to the machinations and thematic content of that classic samurai flick, however there’s a sly, but deliberate character nod to Italian director Sergio Corbucci’s eponymous 60s Western at movie’s end. To Miike’s credit he injects Sukiyaki Western Django with his own unique bravado and deliverance. In Sukiyaki Western Django the women are just as dangerous and staunch as the men.

Yoshino Kimura as Shizuka

The production design and costuming – all vivid and saturated colour - makes viewing the movie feel like you’re tripping; indeed the movie’s visual style is hallucinogenic in its cartoon craziness. The opening scene which features Quentin Tarantino in a cameo (he pops up later under geriatric make-up) as a yarn-slinger is shot on a soundstage complete with painted mountain and sunset as a backdrop. It is this intense hyper-stylised look, combined with the surrealistic violence that gives it the live-action Manga comic edge.

Sukiyaki Western Django Kaori Momoi and Quentin Tarantino

Ruriko is reprimanded by Piringo (Quentin Tarantino)

There is serious gunplay (including a ferocious Gatling machine-gun), but there is also serious swordplay too. Miike is laying on the poetic licence with a spade and shovel. The movie is definitely poetry in motion; dark and twisted like only Miike can. It makes perfect sense Tarantino became involved; he laps this virtuoso genre soup up with a passion and a vengeance.

The Heike posse with the sheriff (Teruyuki Kagawa) in the middle

Performances are all uniformly excellent (made up of many of Asia’s best), except for Tarantino, but then he’s never been that crash hot an actor. Stand outs are Yusuke Iseya as Yoshitsune, the icy-cool leader of the Genji gang, and Kaori Momoi as grandmother Ruriko, a killer in disguise. But what intrigues and confuses in equal measures is the dialogue. This is Miike’s first English language film, but the Asian accents are so thick that it’s impossible to understand what the actors are saying half the time; they might be talking in English, but it still sounds like Japanese! Curiously (apart from the movie’s title) the opening and closing credits and inter-titles are entirely in Japanese. It’s incongruous, but the character calligraphy of the inter-titles looks great.

Sukiyaki Western Django Hideaki Ito and Yusuke Iseya

The Gunman and Yoshitsune duel it out

I wish I’d managed to catch Sukiyaki Western Django on the big screen during the Sydney Film Festival, it cries out to be seen huge and wide in all its vivid, lurid glory. It’s an instant cult classic, and definitely one of Miike’s best movies to date (which is saying a lot since the filmmaker has made more than 70 features!)

Sukiyaki Western Django Japanese movie poster

Here's the U.S. teaser trailer:

For an equally gushing review read Cibbuano's review here (he was lucky to see it ono the big screen!)

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by David O'Connell

October 16th 2008 05:13

Screen Fanatic

Hey Bryn, I remember reading that glowing review from Cib. Then my brother saw it at the Melbourne Int. Film Festival with high expectations and hated it.

I imagine it's probably one of those ones you either love or hate? Or maybe my brother's just got horrible taste............!! (Wouldn't be his first display!!!)

Comment by Damo

October 16th 2008 05:52

Those Japanese Guys.

What a bunch of crazy dudes.

Catch the sword

Comment by Cibbuano

October 16th 2008 21:00

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

Bryn, thanks for the link. Your line:

"It’s probably the most convoluted Western I’ve ever seen (or tried to follow), yet every scene seems perfectly in place and its arc is as smooth and single-minded as the hard arrow from a crossbow."

...is especially observant. For such a lunatic production, it feels so effortless and natural, even the crazy English.

and Kaori Momoi is 50 years old! My GOD she looks good!

David, I think you have to like cult and genre flicks to enjoy this...

Comment by Bryn

October 16th 2008 22:15

Horrorphile

David, no offense, but your brother's taste is in his arse.

But seriously, it is an acquired taste for sure.

Damo, that scene is gold.

Cibby, cheers mate! The cast is dynamite. I especially enjoyed the guy who played the sheriff, and also, the uber-cool gang leader in white with the great hair.

Comment by David O'Connell

October 17th 2008 01:21

Screen Fanatic

(: Absolutely mate, I've been telling him the same thing for years.

I'm going to foist Visitor Q upon him to see how he handles it!!

Comment by Bryn

October 17th 2008 06:22

Horrorphile

He'll squirm something chronic with Visitor Q ... Sit him down for a triple feature of Imprint or Gozu and Audition ... HA! He'll be climbing the walls.

Comment by Cibbuano

October 18th 2008 06:01

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

Bryn, the guy that plays the sheriff - I forget his name - was the lead in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Tokyo Sonata", one of the competition films at the Sydney Film Festival (I was screening it when you were sitting at the next terminal, watching "Encounters at the End of the World") - yeah, that guy is solid...

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