One of Japan's most controversial filmmakers, Takashi Miike, gets his latest bloody, insane extravaganza 'Sukiyaki Western Django' released on Blu-Ray thanks to First Look and while this is certainly one of Miike's lesser efforts, it will still prove a look for the director's cult following.
For anyone not familiar with Miike, the prolific hit-and-miss director has spent the last fifteen years constantly defying genre expectations and turning any number of movie classifications on their ear.
Mostly tackling horror and yakuza/gangster conventions with films like 'Ichii the Killer', 'Dead or Alive', 'Audition' and the original 'One Missed Call', he provides his pics with either surreal violence or a deathly serious and perverse tone and sometimes both which usually calls out his best e.g. 'Audition' which is still his best pic and one of the most unsettling horror films of the last decade.
I could probably go on and on about earlier work from his David Lynchian 'Gozu' to his utter fascinating zombiedy musical 'The Happiness of the Katakuris' to the strangely enchanting 'The Bird People of China,' but I must say that as his work becomes more discovered and more taken into American pop culture, they've become discouragingly more hollow - as if a Miike-wannabe is directing instead of Miike himself.
No clearer example of this is with 'Sukiyaki Western Django', an obvious ode to Spaghetti Westerns which in turn were a take on Kurosawa's samurai pics like 'Yojimbo' (which in turn were a take on John Ford's work...it's true what they say...there's definitely not an original idea in Hollywood anymore..) and as soon as Tarantino shows up in the prologue as a legendary gunslinger, I knew to brace myself for a less resonant Miike experience.
Which is not to say there's not a lot to like here for fans of Miike's signature BF-insanity but it all has a vaguely disaffecting tone and for anybody who has seen 'Visitor Q' knows...his work can get under your skin and stay there. Loosely following the 'Yojimbo'/'A Fistful of Dollars' framework, a nameless gunman rides into a small Nevada town ruled by two rival gangs, the red-adorned Heike and the white-clad Genji both of whom try to recruit the stranger to their cause.
Opting out of joining either just yet, the two warring factions - Heike head by brash Taira no Kyomori (Koichi Sato) and Genji led by Minamoto no Yoshitsune (Yusuke Iseya), a master swordsman itching for a real challenge that doesn't involve gunplay - continue their town-destroying methods of looking for treasure buried by the villagers and soon, a war erupts between the three heavyweights all the while a widow turned whore being a romantic entanglement for everybody.
The plot is borderline irrelevant, however, so don't come expecting much in plot development or even much coherency. This pic is pretty much an attempt to make live-action anime and it succeeds on a level that a lightweight, stylized anime offering would. There's lots of over-the-top choreography, crazy action and cartoonish histrionics and some of this stuff hits and most misses.
The film is in English which means the cast, all Japanese except Tarantino, phonetically learned the lines and there's an obvious detachment between the actors and what's coming out of their mouths. Maybe Miike thought it was funny to see his cast stumble over clichéd western bon mots but the effect generally adds to the overall inconsistent feel of the film.
It does look great though with plenty to look at during any given minute and some undeniable Miikeisms sneak in including a blossoming rose giving birth to a human baby and a quick animated segment featuring an eight-armed gunslinger - both elements that had me salivating for more in this otherwise tame Miike offering.
Also to note is that this First Look Blu-Ray edition runs at 98-minutes compared to the 121-minute original Japanese version. I haven't seen that version so I can't say what the major differences are but I've read that it's mostly just trimming the already trying narrative fat and not excising anything cool...like more violence or nudity.
The film is presented in a 1080p VC1 encode and it's no doubt faithful to the source if not demo worthy. The picture is intentionally and constantly stylized with oversaturation and color changes that don’t exactly lend itself to amazing detail and clarity.
When the camera calms down, color and detail look good and it certainly won't be mistaken for SD but overall, it's a transfer that's fine for the film and no fault of the transfer but not noteworthy otherwise. The English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is great, however with 98-minutes of gun-blasting aural goodness to take in.
Special Features include an almost hour-long documentary that covers the whole production of the film and this provides a lot of great insight into Miike's eccentric mind. We also get 15 minutes of deleted scenes that are mildly entertaining but wisely cut and Digital Copy of the film along with BD-Live functionality.
This pic may split Miike fans down the middle as it abandons some of what makes Miike's most effective films work - his pics can be overblown and stylized but not at the expense of keeping the audience intrigued in the characters - but there's still just enough touches to be entertaining. On the tech side, though, First Look continues their successful Blu-Ray releases with solid video, audio and special features.
Sukiyaki Western Django [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
Your Talkback on this Story