Review of Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) by Vince K — 09 Mar 2010

I always hated westerns (see my Unforgiven review), and have definitely never seen one of these "Spaghetti Westerns" so many people love. Well hey, I grew up in the '80s, and compared to the slew of interesting new movies on TV, every western that ever popped up looked extremely old and crappy.

And boring. I always said the only way I would actually watch a western is if it only had a bunch of Asian people in it. So here we go - a Spaghetti Western by one of my favorite directors, Japanâ??s Takashi Miike.

Miike is probably most famous for the shockingly disturbing film Audition and the wild Ichi the Killer, but Fudoh is great as well and the bizarre Visitor Q is one of my all-time favorite movies. So, when Takashi Miike makes a western, you can be sure there's going to be a lot of blood.

Quentin Tarantino has long been a big fan and supporter of Miike, so it was great to see Tarantino as one of the stars in the film. He plays a gunslinger who tells the whole story (and there's also a great scene of him slapping around some Asian chick for cooking his dinner wrong.

) The story takes place in Nevada during the gold rush days, with 2 rival gangs - the Reds and the Whites, fighting over the hidden treasure of a small town that they terrorize. It did make sense that everyone in this town is Asian, because many of them did come to America back then to build the railroads (and later open the Panda Express franchise).

A lone gunslinger rolls into town that is quite formidable, and both gangs try to entice him into joining their side. And in a Romeo & Juliet way, a White and Red get married and have a child. In a great scene, the husband is killed by the leader of the Reds, and when the wife goes screaming and crying to his side, the Red keeps shooting him again and again so the blood splashes all over her face.

"Red, my favorite color!" he says, which is bad-ass. But to be honest, the movie doesn't really get interesting until about 45-minutes in, when a lot more action starts taking place. The fight scenes are pretty fucking amazing (especially the finale).

It was awesome to see bullets and arrows deflected by swords, like the gunslingers are fuckinâ?? Jedi's! Now THATâ??S the way you make a western interesting! Sometimes I really wish that the Asians had taken over the world, because we would've all grown up being taught these astonishing fighting styles.

It would also have been good for the white trash of our world to learn a bit about honor.