STUDIO: First Look
RELEASE DATE: November 11, 2008
STARRING: Quentin Tarantino, Yusuke Iseya, Kaori Momoi, and Hideaki Ito
WRITTEN BY: Masa Nakamura & Takashi Miike
DIRECTED BY: Takashi Miike
FEATURES: Previews
Deleted Scenes
Making Of
Blu-ray Live Enabled
Includes A Digital Copy Of Sukiyaki Western Django

What the hell? I'm all for weird. I love Takashi Miike. I love Asian cinema. There's a Korean wacked-out ode to Sergio Leone coming out next year called The Good The Bad The Weird that's going to blow your mind with its awesomeness. But Sukiyaki Western Django is a different kind of weird. Miike has long been one of the most vibrantly alive directors working in the world and I don't usually care when his movies don't make any sense (check out his The Happiness of the Katakuris for one of the most gloriously weird movies ever made), but there's something about Sukiyaki Western Django that breeds a different kind of confusion and it's not a good one. Some Miike is mesmerizing in its balletic refusal to adhere to conventional cinematic storytelling. Some Miike is boring for the same reason. Sukiyaki Western Django too often tends to the latter. It's a beautifully shot film with some of the most vibrant costumes and colors ever seen in the genre, but it's slow, slow, slow and determined to give you nothing but a pretty picture. It's the kind of movie your eyes will love but your brain and heart will check out long before the final credits.

If you're unfamiliar with Miike, start with Audition, Ichi the Killer, and his amazing installment of Masters of Horror, Imprint. When you're done there or if you're a big Takashi fan already, come back to Sukiyaki Western Django, a blend of Asian style, the spaghetti Western, and, well, kind of a fashion show. Miike puts everyone in colorful, elaborate costumes and guides them through a film that's named after the classic spaghetti Western Django by Sergio Corbucci but has more references to the work of Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa, most notably Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars. Imagine watching Ichi the Killer, Fistful of Dollars, and some really weird couture fashion show simultaneously and then going to bed and dreaming about it. The vision in your head would be visually stunning, but a movie? Maybe not.

Sukiyaki Western Django is about two clans battling for a legendary treasure hidden in a desolate mountain town. A lone gunmen (clearly modeled after Leone's "Man with No Name") comes to town and each of the clans try to woo him to their side. It turns out that the gunman has his own motives and reasons for being in town. The plot is a skeleton on which to hang elaborate costumes, trick shots, and buckets of blood. But it's all empty. It's a beautiful homage with none of the weight of what it's paying homage to. It's hard to follow and kind of exhausting. When I realized that I couldn't really follow what was happening and wondered how much longer I would just be entertained by the pretty pictures, I checked the display on my Blu-Ray player to see - it was less than 30 minutes in and the self-consciousness and too-cool nature of the storytelling had already pushed me out of Sukiyaki Western Django.

SWD is best seen on Blu-Ray, where the vibrant colors and majestic style of Miike can be fully appreciated in 2.35 anamorphic widescreen. The Dolby True HD audio track is even more remarkable. It's interesting that the video and audio on the Blu-Ray release of Sukiyaki Western Django is so good because it could be argued that it detracts from the final product. It's a movie that's too concerned about how it looks and sounds, two elements that you're going to focus on even more on Blu-Ray. So, it looks and sounds great in HD, but to what end? Special features include deleted scenes, a making of, and a digital copy of the film.