Review of Sukiyaki Western Django

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.