Review of Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) by Elle Y — 17 Nov 2008

Warning 1: This film is marketed as a breed between samurai and spaghetti western films. It is not. Thematically maybe, but there's only one person who has a sword and he only uses it for the final battle. It is all in all a western.

The director of the film is very well known in cult classic circles. Takeshi Miike. He's responsible for such films as "Audition" "Gozu" and other supposedly disturbing or crazy films. I've not seen one of them so to me this was my first exposure to him. It's a pretty fun ride the only problem you have at first is the language barrier. All the characters in the film with the exception of Quinten Tarentino have english as a second language, some far better than most, and some even try western accents only to fall into Australian accents then dropping it all together. Once you get past that the film itself is very fun. So it begs the question: why go with english voices when it's far more distracting than having japanese speaking cowboys? Since Quinten's the only gai-jin in the film they could have easily dubbed over him, in the opening scene I thought they did dub over his english voice with another's. Plus if someone does watch this, answer me this: how does the opening work with the rest of the film? Anyways moving onto the film-- The premise of the film itself is nothing too new or exciting. Basically what would happen after Romeo and Juliet except no one cares because they think they were both bad. A man of exceptional skill comes to town to offer his killing ability to which ever group pays the most. Now of course with any good western he's got more to him that just wanting to kill.

Stylistically I don't understand the color saturation and dulling in some of the scenes, some of it just looks like poorly done work, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, it was a strange 'stylistic-choice'. The music is standard western it works very well in some scenes. All together the pieces look ... to me not top quality, the sets were beautiful but at the same time, everything looked newly built, like someone had just built a town and the wood was still fresh, there was no weather ware.

Overall the film itself is as with absurd japanese style films, a good fun watch, there are technical problems and errors but once you get past the language and seemingly low budget first scene, it rides a little smoother. I just wish they had more swords and sword vs gun fighting or sword and gun vs sword and gun. In the end, you'll enjoy or hate it.