Ares: How could I not like a samurai Western? Bullet-slicing katana blades, a gatling gun in a coffin... I was in war god heaven. But why was everybody talking so slow and weird? Thumbs up.
Athena: Maybe it was because apart from Quentin Tarantino, every actor was Japanese. They must have spent months practicing those English lines. The whole cast deserves ten points for effort. But the glut for violence went over the line when Tarantino's character hit his wife for making poor sukiyaki. Thumbs down.
Dionysos: I admit gratuitous violence and some tedious dialogue, but it's made up for by Miike's filmmaking genius. His playful mix of Japanese and Western motifs, at once gritty and flamboyant, comes out on top. Witness the gangsters hanged from a Shinto torii gate, and the Mojave Desert-scene with Mt Fuji in the background. What's more, the colors are nothing short of luscious. There's hardly a shot that isn't a work of art in itself. I was delighted by this quirky genre film, whose style reminded me of Tarantino's own Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction.Sukiyaki Western Django is the story of a town torn by rival gangs, the Reds and Whites. Into this hell comes a half-blood gunman in black. Rumors of gold persist, a young couple dares to cross Red-White lines, and legends lurk of the great gunslinger Bloody Benten. The movie gets its name from the 1966 Django, called a "spaghetti" Western because it was made in Italy. Hence Miike's film becomes a "sukiyaki" Western, after the popular Japanese soup. Django motifs such as the machine-gun toting coffin are mixed with themes from Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, and Shakespeare's Henry VI. Language: English
Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Hideaki ito, Yusuke Iseya, Kaori Mamoi, Yoshino Kimura, Masanobu Ando, Shun Ogori, Quentin Tarantino
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 59% fresh
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DID YOU KNOW? The motif of an eagle carrying a snake in its talons, featured in the opening scene, was a favored omen of Zeus. In Homer's Iliad, it augurs ill for the Trojans.
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