Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Written by: Masa Nakamura, Takashi Miike
Starring: Hideaki Itô, Kôichi Satô, Quentin Tarantino
Directed by legendary Japanese film maker, Takashi Miike, of Ichi the Killer and Audition fame, Sukiyaki Western Django is a tale of two tribes at war (a point is all that you can score – thank you Frankie ;)), the Reds and the Whites. The Reds had initially took over the quiet peaceful village when they discovered gold was hidden there. The villagers succumbed to Red rule until the Whites came along, who took charge over the Reds. Biding their time, the Reds regained status and the village is split into two territories, each side wanting to find the gold and rule supreme. A mysterious, highly skilled gunslinger comes to town and with the help of a grandmother in the village, he must decide which side to take, the Reds, the Whites or neither.
The film opens with Quentin Tarantino slicing open a snake to retrieve an egg. A man appears behind him, quizzing Tarantino as he points a gun at him. Tarantino starts to spout a lot of mumbo jumbo about the Reds and the Whites in American cowboy twant and then starts speaking in a Japanese type accent, which was enough to make me cringe and grab the sick bucket. I felt i’d already been watching this for an hour and it’d only been 5 minutes. We then follow the story of the lone gunslinger who comes to town and discover that a marriage between a White woman and a Red man occured, and they had a child together. From that moment on they grew roses in their garden, of which the petals were red and white to symbolise their love. The man wanting a tranquil life tries to persuade the Reds to leave but is killed infront of his son and wife. His widow vows of revenge on her husbands killers and returns to the whites. The lone gunslinger himself has reasons to get involved in the war and we follows the different sides as they prepare to beat each other once and for all.
This is a mixed up film. The scenes are tacky with fake backdrops, bad CGI, unfunny jokes and laughable characters. We have Quentin Tarantino who can’t act for toffee and the Sheriff who has a split personality, one of which sides with the Reds and the other sides with the Whites. The gun shot injuries are unrealistic with giant holes straight through the victims body and many a scene looks like they’ve been borrowed from Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez collaborations. The Gatling Gun makes an appearance, a screenshot which looks almost identically to one in Machete. A manga drawing appears on screen for a split second a la Kill Bill. Samurai sword fights…. i could go on. It just seemed a load of ideas were thrown into this horrible mess of a film, that was quite frankly boring and just seemed like a pathetic homage to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. The only good thing about it was the grandmother, BB, who turned out to be rather cool, but did not get enough screen time.
Rating: 
Oh dear. I generally like Takeshi Miike films, but he does make the odd bad one and this would seem to be one of them. To be honest, i’d never heard of this but it sounds like he’s trying too hard to break the Hollywood market. I’ll give this a go if i can find it, simply for the fact its a Miike film, but i won’t expect much