Midnight Movie Madness: “Sukiyaki Western Django” avatar of Yojimbo

“Sukiyaki Western Django” – (2007, Japan, 121 minutes – rated R)

A gunfighter arrives in a small town divided between two powerful and vicious clans, the Whites and the Reds. You’re right: you’ve seen this before in “Yojimbo”, “last man standing” and others…

Watch the trailer:

What sets “Sukiyaki western Django” apart, then, is director Takashi Miike’s style. Visually, it looks like a very colorful dream, with that “photoshopped” quality many movies have nowadays, with high contrast and bright hues.

It has been called visually stunning, but I think that’s overstating it, just as “Avatar” felt to me like watching a fancy screensaver for almost three hours.

But there’s more to Miike’s film that that, thankfully, because it does drag a bit at times.
“Sukiyaki Western Django” is an interesting mix of action, tragedy, violence of the vicious strain, lyrical beauty and humor.

The Sheriff (Teruyuki Kagawa) was very, very funny in a cartoonish way and the dialogue, spoken in English by the

Japanese cast who must have worked hard at it, contains a few pearls of wisdom such as “life is all about goodbyes” and indeed “the sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things”.
There are too many references to keep track of, and the presence of Quentin Tarantino playing a gunfighter a-la-Spaghetti-Eastwood didn’t thrill me.
Watching it all unfold, you get a sense that Takashi Miike was a gifted child who in adult life is hopefully going to find challenges before folding into self-reverence: again, “Sukiyaki Western Django” holds together well but it feels more improvised than crafted.
It’s fun and much better than the French “Renegade”, though not quite on par with “the good, the bad, the weird” overall.

“Sukiyaki Western Django” gets 3 jellybeans