Sukiyaki Western Django

(2007)

Stranger - Hideaki Ito

Yoichi - Masanobu Ando

Kiyomori / Henry - Koichi Sato

Also Starring: Kaori Momoi, Yusuke Iseya, Renji Ishibashi, Yoshino Kimura, Quentin Tarantino

Directed by - Takashi Miike

A story about a town with a hidden gold treasure. Two gangs after the gold, Genji the white and Heike the red. Some innocent people cought in the middle of this and a stranger who rides into town.

Supposed to happen several hundred years after the Battle of Dannoura, which ended the Genpei War. The war took place in Japan in 1180-1185. IMDB got the 'plot outline' wrong, they say it takes place during the Genpei War in the end of 1100s. So much for history, there's alot of holes in the story and I wouldn't spend much time thinking about where, when or why it takes place. A Japanese, Cowboy Western is strange enough.

Another claim is that this is a remake of Django, I have to slightly disagree. Sure there are resemblances but it's much closer to Yojimbo or Fistful of Dollars. It's not like the stranger comes to town dragging a coffin, or even use the machinegun. I think they should have left the 'Django' out of the title. Would have been much more fun to unexpectedly find the connections. At the end we get some more info about the Django reference which makes little sense and I suppose it should be taken as a joke. There are some scenes referring to other SW's also, not only Django. I combined a list at the bottom of this page not to spoil it from someone wants to find them for themself.

Takashi Miike might be most know for his violent 'Ichi The Killer', there's graphic violence in this one too but not compareable to Ichi. Camerawork, production, etc. is good and it's well filmed. Has some interesting character, the stranger seems a bit distant and not much focus is set on him. Well so because the rest of the cast feel much better than Ito's stranger. Quentin Tarantino also has a cameo role. Some comedic scenes also inculded.

First half of this two hour movie is more about backgrounds of the story, the real action begins after this. I had some problems understanding the dialogue which is in English but with heavy Japanese accent. They should have used the SW gunshot sound more and not only in the intro and on one other occasion. Music has some guitars, whistles and trumpets but not used as much as in the SW's. The remade Django theme song only comes to play at the end titles.

Enjoyable and different mix of genres, we Spaghetti Western fans get more out of this than regular movie goers.

 

Kills: 91	Stranger -	††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† ††
	Yoichi -	†††
	Kiyomori -	††††† ††††† †
	other -	††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† ††††† †††††

††††† †††††

Quotes:

Yoichi: "-How much you got?"  Stranger:"-Depends, how much you pay me."

21 February 2008

Spoiler Warning

Spaghetti Western references I found, some might be unintentional and I'm sure I missed some also:

Django: Coffin with the machine gun.

Django: Cross with name 'Mecedes Zaro'.

Django: One of Genji's men have bad teeth, reference to Ringo/Jose Terrón in Django?

For A Few Dollars More: Yoichi seems to have a similiar weapon pocket on his horse like Mortimer, also gun with shoulder stock + the sound when the weapon pocket is released and the gunshot sound.

Sartana: One of Genji's men tend to wear his rifle over his shoulder like Sartana.

Various: Tarantino's gunshots sound like SW gunshots altought slightly modified.