Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
½ — Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
There is a particular kind of film that arrives trailing a cloud of critical goodwill and genre-theory enthusiasm, and Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) is very much one of those. Directed by Takashi Miike, the Japanese filmmaker whose output ranges from the visceral horror of his early work to the wild formal experimentation that became something of a calling card, this is a Japanese-language Western shot in English, drawing simultaneously on Sergio Corbucci's 1966 spaghetti Western Django and the classic Kurosawa chambara tradition. The premise is borrowed wholesale from the same dusty well that Akira Kurosawa drank from and Leone then redirected westward: a lone, unnamed gunfighter rides into a town controlled by two warring factions, the red Heike clan and the white Genji clan, and refuses to simply pick a side. It is the kind of genre collision that sounds, on paper, almost irresistibly entertaining, a fusion that had already proved its worth when Yojimbo quietly became A Fistful of Dollars. Whether that promise survives contact with the actual film is, of course, another matter entirely.
Miike was, by 2007, a genuinely prolific figure, having directed well over sixty features in roughly fifteen years. His name alone carried a certain weight with genre audiences, though that weight came attached to wildly inconsistent results. Sukiyaki Western Django was produced through a partnership involving Sony Music Entertainment Japan, dentsu, and Sedic, and runs to a fairly generous 121 minutes. The principal cast is led by Hideaki Ito as the nameless gunfighter, with Koichi Sato and Yūsuke Iseya heading up the rival gangs, Kaori Momoi providing the film's more mournful register, and Teruyuki Kagawa adding considerable menace. The film also features a guest appearance from Quentin Tarantino, whose visible enthusiasm for this corner of cinema history needs little introduction to anyone who has spent time with his filmography. If you are after other Japanese films covered on this site, it is worth checking out the review of The Snow Woman (1968) for a sense of how differently Japanese genre cinema can land, or indeed the more recent Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) for a contemporary comparison. For a point of reference closer in time and register, The Raid 2 (2014) stands as an example of the kind of action filmmaking that commits fully to its own logic and largely earns the results.
What makes Sukiyaki Western Django such a polarising watch is the gap between its evident visual ambition and the actual experience of sitting through it. Miike clearly has a relationship with this material that goes beyond mere pastiche, and the costume design and cinematography have a genuinely polished, if occasionally overwrought, quality. The English-language dialogue, delivered by a cast for whom it is a second language, gives the whole thing an odd, floaty texture, sometimes charming, sometimes simply disorienting. Genre-mixing films of this era, think of the way Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) handled its own blend of traditions, tended to work best when the tonal register stayed consistent enough to hold the audience. Here, that consistency is rather harder to locate.
The worst intro in movie history Tarantino in the beginning feels absolutely ridiculous and inane. It destroys any credibility this film has by terrible acting, changing accents and awful set design. Then it goes into the movie itself and it's beautiful looking, don't get me wrong, but it's executed so weirdly. Sad to say this but it's up there for one of the worst films I've ever seen
I find it difficult to argue with any of that. The Tarantino framing sequence is the kind of thing that might read as a knowing wink in isolation, but as an opening gambit it genuinely does the film no favours, setting a tone that the main feature then seems uncertain about either continuing or correcting. And that is the frustration at the heart of it all, really: there are images here that linger, moments where Miike's eye for composition asserts itself and you catch a glimpse of the film this might have been. But beautiful images stranded inside a muddled and erratic whole is a hard sell, and a two-hour run time makes the misfires land that much heavier. Some genre experiments earn their chaos. This one, for me, mostly just makes you wish someone had taken a firmer hand in the edit. Not every Django needs a revival.
Rating: ½ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-05-03
Trailer
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More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
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More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
