SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
Director: Takashi Miike

A frenetic loose re-working of Sergio Corbucci's seminal spaghetti Western classic Django, prolific Japanese auteur Takashi Miike’s newest film SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (all in caps) is as ostentatious and outrageous as the title might imply. A cross-cultural death match between samurai action films of the 1970s and spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, Miike pulls out all the stops and systematically dismantles two fine cinematic traditions, juicing them for all their pop culture sensibility.

A lone gunman wanders into a deserted ghost town, led by tales of a buried treasure hidden somewhere in the village. When he arrives, he finds the town decimated by two rival gangs—the Reds and the Whites—both in search of said treasure and permanently camped out on each side of the town. The villagers have mostly fled, been killed or enslaved by the gangs. Both gangs immediately try to recruit the new arrival to their respective side, but the enigmatic gunman has seen Yojimbo, so to speak, and will happily pair up with whichever side is prepared to offer him a larger cut of the treasure.

That’s all you really need to know about the plot, such as it is. Miike spins three tales, the War of the Roses in England, the Genpei War in Japan and a spaghetti western like a juggler, keeping all three afloat simultaneously at the expense of logic and common sense. This is an adventure, pure and simple, and the plot is a shifting superfluous thing, not to be taken seriously. This is a film about fun, the pure exuberant joy in reckless filmmaking, of being able to say, “Let’s give that guy a crossbow!” and not have to worry about the historical contexts or the logical fallacy, only on the inherent badassery of it.

Western audiences (the people, not the film genre) watching SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO might be a similar experiences of Japanese audiences going to see Tarantino’s Kill Bill, like a cross-cultural reversal of sorts. In both, you have a foreign pop-culture junkie (mis)appropriating a genre from another country, shoving it in the blender, and feeding it back to the country of origin. The end result, part homage, part utter retardation has little to do with the aforementioned genre, but is outrageously fascinating and entertaining all the same. This comparison is made all the more apparent by Miike casting Tarantino in SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO as a grizzled foreign gunslinger, a cute tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Miike pandering to his North American audience and creative counterpart in crime.

In full parody mode, Miike seamlessly straps samurai swords to the sides of cowboys, melding two of the most testosterone-laden genres together in a no-holds-barred bloodbath, like Yojimbo versus the Man With No Name. To make things even stranger, all the actors perform their dialogue in phonetic English to outrageous results. Having Japanese actors miming in English, usually with horribly hammy delivery and outrageous enunciation gives the already surreal film an extra layer of absurd otherworldly alien activity, like dozens of test-tubed cloned William Shatners delivering their jilted dialogue en masse. It... is very… strange!

The odd thing about such an outrageous film premise is that SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO is surprisingly coherent, straightforward and enjoyable… three quantifiers not often applied in conjunction with a Miike film. But here, finally, is a film Miike could sell to a Western audience at large, doubly so if you slap a "Quentin Tarantino presents..." logo atop it. In truth, this bizarre hodge-podge of genres could only be pulled off by a director as dysfunctional and fascinating as Miike. But unlike past Miike offerings, a mainstream English audience might actually enjoy this film; or at the very least, not vomit and break out into tears en masse, the expected reaction to the average Miike film.

Though tamer by numerous levels of magnitude than his usual work, Takashi Miike still manages to cram in his esoteric touches here and there to make SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO worthy of his weirdness. From the castrated gunshot victims to the Shakespeare-quoting samurai to the mysterious coffin being pulled around throughout the town (fans of Django will know its contents), at no point do we forget who is directing this film. The difference here is, Miike clearly wants his audiences to enjoy this experience on a purely sensual level—he gives us explosions, gunfights, swordfights, every manner of action cliché run awry, and eschews on any deeper visceral explorations that hallmark his normal repertoire. This is pure surface level filmmaking at its most fun--simple plot, bad acting, outrageous action and violence, and nothing even remotely challenging about it. It goes no deeper. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO does not challenge, or create controversy, expose anxiety in its audience. It simply is the ultimate expression of bubblegum pop-cultural cimena run awry.

This isn't Miike's best work by far, but the elements that hinder the film also make it one of his most enjoyable to audiences. By dropping the gore, the guts and the genitals, Takashi Miike has dummied things down for his audience somewhat, but in exchange, has produced the most straightforwardly enjoyable film of his recent career. You give a little, you get a little.

Verdict: 85/100