Review of Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) by Simon L — 29 Jan 2009

Man, you wanna talk about a movie with a misleading opening? Sukiyaki Western Django's first scene - with Quentin Tarantino doing his best Bruce Campbell impersonation on the fakest desert set you ever saw - does all it can to set you up for a trashy, silly, absurdest farce.

Who could have guessed that it would turn out to be a genuinely solid action flick? The "they're cowboys, but they're also samurai!" concept should turn out just a stupid as it sounds, but Takashi Miike demonstrates a sly knowledge of just how similar those two genres really are.

As a result, one quickly forgets that the setting makes no literal sense, as the internal logic of the plot works so well. Yes, it's a plot that would be unbearably cliched if done as a straight western or samurai film, but that's the beauty of the whole thing.

The familiarity of the plot underscores the similarity of these two genres by borrowing equally from both of them. Besides, if the story really WAS as wacky as the set up, then it probably WOULD have been Quentin mugging it up for two hours (not that that wouldn't have been interesting, but it wouldn't have been as good) As pretty much everyone in the world will point out, the accent-heavy English dialog hurts the overall viewing experience, but not enough to seriously weigh the film down.

A pleasant surprise all around.