More action, gun fights and swords fail to make this a better film than the spaghetti westerns that came before. Tarantino is great but his small part is too little to lift this Eastern oater much above average
Japanese action cult icon Takashi Miike (“Ichi the Killer,” “Ôdishon,” “Visitor Q”) finally unites with his soul brother Quentin Tarantino for the film made in horror movie heaven. Although Tarantino’s presence in this film as Piringo, the story-telling gunslinger, would appear to be more inspiration than substance, it appears the two spent considerable time together plotting this piece. For those readers who have had the pleasure of the Sergio Leone / Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, that is the quickest summation of this film. Miike takes a dozen plot points from western, horror and comedy thrillers and adds his own sardonic twists.
The title borrows from the original “Django” by Italian director Sergio Corbucci (1966) and is as much an “in your face” rejection of the “R” rating as the Corbucci work was forty years ago. The film more or less repeats the violent rape of the terrified Shizuka (Yoshino Kimura) after the brutal killing of her husband in front of their toddler son. Similar to the rape in “High Plains Drifter,” the sequence doesn’t get any prettier with repetition. Nor does it achieve a higher degree of validity as a plot device.
In partial apology for the female exploitation the other major female character old woman shop keeper Ruriko (Kaori Momoi), emerges as surprise six-gun swinging killer extraordinaire. Miike’s women exude both inner and outer strength in the face of adversity, although the men still run the show, whereas in Eastwood’s “Drifter” the women were little more than vessels of the men’s impotence and cowardice.
One of the best techniques used in the film is the shooting of all of the scenes in English, spoken with considerable difficulty by the thoroughly Japanese cast. Opposing clan leaders Yoshitsune (Yusuke Iseya) and Kiyomori (Koichi Sato) deliver their lines in short, clipped phrases with marvelous combinations of psychotic threat and fortune cookie syntax. This imbues the film with a vital cartoon aspect---the lines actually emerge from the actors' mouths like dialog balloons. When Piringo the gunfighter (Tarantino) emerges to speak actual English, it is funnier than the strongly accented English of the Japanese actors.
These exaggerated devices emphasize the fantastic nature of the film’s context. The clan war itself is documented from the 12th century. A crossbow is used as a weapon as well as the more dominant six-shooters. The obligatory samurai sword is used as well, but in novel ways, as a symbol more than an instrument of death. The guns kill, but the sword dares the audience to take the violence seriously. The spaghetti westerns worshipped death far more than this film.
This film is a great example of two very independent film makers finding a common ground and exploiting it. The only problem is that we have seen so much of the same thing from each of them. Tarantino's Samurai sword shtick is wearing thin; viewers are starting to have to work too hard to find humor in his exaggerations and ironies. What ever happened to the amazing creativity of "Pulp Fiction?"
As far as his treatment of Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone and the spaghetti westerns, Miike needs to either find new subject matter, a much enhanced moral, or some vastly improved technique, because the only viewers who will appreciate this sort of re-hash are those who never saw the macaroni oaters in the first place.
Come to think of it, most of the viewers alive today probably never saw them, so maybe that isn't a bad bet!
One redeeming virtue of this western is that although women are abused, they emerge in the end in positions of power. So one could make the argument that the films are less misogynistic than their earlier Italian counterparts. But by the time the women get to exact their complete revenge we are so inured to the Peckinpah blood letting that there is little impact.
Tarantino the actor is great. Too bad he didn't extend his hilarious and well-acted performance through another two thirds of the film.
Release: August 29, 2008
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