the audience applauded

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Trust Japanese director Takeshi Miike to dream up something as outrageously funny, wicked and dramatic such as Sukiyaki Western Django, his take on what a Japanese Western would look and feel like, encapsulating genre themes, character motivations, and action done to violent perfection. Fans of Westerns will definitely not want to miss this, just as how Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng had taken the genre and given it a Thai spin, Miike does the same for this film in a daring attempt to weave something unique into his vastly varied filmography.Such is Miike's clout that he had gotten Quentin Tarantino to play a character with different outlooks, in an introductory scene that resembled the color saturated scenarios in Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger. This scene alone will set the tone for the film, in being amusing in the black humour sense, filled with impossible action amped up for entertainment sake, and a host of characters you'd want to know more of. Like any classic Westerns, it then progressed some years later, with a mysterious, skilled gunslinger (Hideaki Ito) riding into a town to decide to which clan should he offer his skills to, the Reds or the Whites, each needing resource to track down the location of rumoured treasure in the land.It's like the good the bad and the ugly, where the only good guy you know is the skilled gunslinger, with his introduction already showcasing what he's capable of. We learn more about the backstories of both clans and their leaders, and from then on the gunslinger's allegiance turn to focus on Shizuka (Yoshino Kimura) the widow, the daughter in law of Ruriko (Kaori Momoi) where the latter turns out to be more than who she's willing to tell. Taking an interest, the Gunslinger hatches a quick plot to rid the land of its scourge, which culminates in a crazy all out gun battle where winner takes all.The cast is filled with recognizable faces from contemporary Japanese cinema, where besides those already mentioned, Teruyuki Kagawa stars as the irreverent Sheriff who has his own agenda, and I'm sure is in a role that's quite unreal as the character who just refuses to die. Yoshino Kimura also deserves special mention in her role as the temptress out for revenge but not sure how, and has this really strange dance to perform midway through the film. Hideaki Ito oozes machismo as the classic hero who talks less and lets his skills impose his will, and just about everyone puts in double the effort to ensure that their English enunciation is as perfect as can be, with the benchmark I used was whether they were comprehensible even with the subtitles turned off.It's pretty violent but in the cartoony sort of way, heavily relying on special and practical effects to make you feel every bullet spinning in the air, every round that impacts the body, and the aftermath damage caused, which I mentioned hovers in quite an unreal manner which is likely played out just for laughs. Action is carefully crafted to avoid repetition, though with what's inherent with the genre you do occasionally feel for anyone to dispatch another with less theatrics. But this is Sukiyaki Western Django, and part of the fun is to see how the tried and tested formula got spun on its head. Not quite memorable, but a fun ride nonetheless.

...and fails, on almost every level. I have been an avid fan of Miike for years, ever since I saw "Fudoh: A New Generation" in the mid-nineties. So it was particularly upsetting for me to witness this, his first try at "sell-out cinema." The evidence appears with the opening scenes, when a haggard "It-boy" Quentin Tarantino appears for a pointless cameo. Correct me if i am wrong, but Tarantino is supposed to be a Miike fan, not the other way around. After all, it was Tarantino who made a name for himself mimicking the style of guys like Takashi Miike, right? Anyway, Miike has all of his Japanese actors speaking English. why? Could it be because the targeted audience for this one won't or can't read subtitles? Slapstick comedy meets flashy violence and drama. That rarely works, and it doesn't here. The evidence of this being a film from the master are certainly there; some wonderful imagery and stylish, hallucinatory sets and some great, gratuitous violence as well. But this film doesn't know what it wants to be; it desperately wants to be cool, and to be a "hit" with the American crowd, but it is too avant-garde to be accepted by the mainstream crowd, and too dumb to be embraced by lovers of Japanese pink and samurai films, which are always beautiful, and quite serious. I think that this director is too twisted to make a mainstream film, and it is evident here; he couldn't resist going into obscure territory at times, with his characters acting insane with no explanation, and the extreme violence to women harken back to the pink films from the 70's. Make up your mind; what are you trying to create with this film? Maybe you tried to please everyone, and wound up pleasing no one?I must be losing my mind; i'm ranting to Takashi Miike and he's not even here.. All I can say is that I am disappointed and I hope that the creator of so many seminal art-house films goes back to making the kinds of films that he is known and loved for. Remember "Big Bang Love?" How does one go from that to... this?? And why are these artists so intent on being like Hollywood, an artless, tacky machine that died years ago? money isn't everything guys...

A strange movie, I must say. But before I go into the movie itself, I feel the need to talk about the case.That's why I actually bought this movie, originally. Because the case was so...pretty. And Quentin Tarantino's name on it sealed the deal for me. The cover design is so well done and beautiful and artistic and many other synonyms of those, which provides the perfect segue into the movie itself.It starts out with, of all people, Quentin Tarantino. The background is noticeably fake, a setting sun over the horizon painted onto a backdrop. I was a bit taken aback, at first, and I never really understood why, but I rolled with it. With the first words spoken, however, it became painfully apparent what this movies main problem would be.You see, despite the fact that almost all of the cast uses Japanese as their primary language (I haven't verified this, but it's pretty obvious), the filmmaker, Takashi Miike, shot the whole thing in English. Thankfully, there are subtitles, but the lack of understandable speech presents a great barrier. It's basically the story of two clans, the Heike, led by Kiyomori/Henry (Kōichi Satō), and the Genji, led by Yoshitsune (Yūsuke Iseya), that are battling over a town for a fabled treasure. A mysterious stranger (Hideaki Ito) rolls into town, much like Clint Eastwood in those old movies that we love oh-so-much. This is a beautifully done movie, with many breathtaking scenes, exciting, lovable characters (for the most part), and plenty of blood and gore. Oh, and a rape, so keep the kiddies away from this one.

This is further proof that cult Japanese director Takashi Miike is not for me: as can be deduced from the title, the film is a pseudo-homage to the Italian Spaghetti Westerns (though Django has almost nothing to do with it!). In fact, the plot is yet another rehash of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic YOJIMBO (1961), which had actually led to Sergio Leone kick-starting the Spaghetti Western subgenre with that film's first remake A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)! Anyway, for Miike, this is typically violent fare – even more pointless than usual and all rather amateurishly assembled; besides, having the actors speak English results in unintentional laughter more than anything else (though Quentin Tarantino's absurd cameo is no less embarrassing: incidentally, I may well have been witness to the genesis of the picture back when these two mavericks 'butted heads' at the 2004 Venice Film Festival!). Needless to say, the squalid atmosphere peculiar to European Westerns is largely missing here…but, then, neither does the film extract particular benefit from its own country's heritage! With characterization tending towards mere posture (when it is not insipid), we are left with a clutch of stylized-but-hollow action sequences to grab the attention – all of which, ultimately, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Perhaps mercifully, the version I watched is the shorter (by 23 minutes) International Cut.