Takashi Miike's new Eastern Western "Sukiyaki Western Django" has many local precedents, though he claims he drew his inspiration from those spaghetti Westerns (usually called "macaroni Westerns" here) that he watched as a boy with his father. Shot almost entirely in English in Yamagata Prefecture, with a cast that includes Miike fan Quentin Tarantino, "Sukiyaki" is not one of Miike's cheapie genre pics for the video shelves. Instead, it is big-budget entertainment for the world market that masquerades as a wacky cult film — a strategy often used by Tarantino himself.
Both Miike and Tarantino, overpraised and overindulged for years, are now in the baroque phases of their careers, strenuously embellishing by-now familiar themes with ever more convoluted arabesques of cinematic referencing and auteurist posturing. I count myself as a fan of both — but I also think they have both reached an impasse, like aging rockers who jazz up their stage shows as vehicles for their decades-old riffs. Not that all of Miike's riffs in "Sukiyaki" are stale. He and scriptwriter Masa Nakamura have mashed up the Western and samurai genres in ways clever, cool and eye-poppingly outrageous. In other words, exactly what you would expect from Miike. But the over-the-top gestures that once seemed so spontaneous — like a naughty 14-year-old dreaming up gruesome tortures — now often feel ponderous and arch.
"Sukiyaki" begins with a poncho-wearing cowpoke (Tarantino) fending off baddies with superhuman feats of cool, then enjoying a meal of — what else? — sukiyaki (a beef stew). Naturally, he has a story to tell (much of which the film relates in an extended flashback), about remnants of the warring Genji and Heike clans who, centuries after the climatic battle of Dannoura (1185), are living survival-of-the-fittest existences in the new Wild East. Then gold is discovered near a Heike town and a gold rush ensues. One day a gang of red-clad Heike toughs, lead by the bombastic Kiyomori (Koichi Sato), swagger into town; but instead of allying with their Heike brethren, the gang violently take over, while co-opting the craven sheriff (Teruyuki Kagawa). After the brutal murder of the elderly mayor (Renji Ishibashi), the townspeople flee.
Soon after, a white-wearing Genji gang appear on the scene and start a turf war with the Heike. The Genji leader is the dandyish but deadly Yoshitsune (Yusuke Iseya); among his followers are the buffoonish Benkei (Takaaki Ishibashi) and crossbow-wielding Yoichi (Masanobu Ando). (One of the film's more memorable stunts is Benkei blasting a melon-size hole through a surprised Heike gangster with a gun, followed by Yoichi zapping an arrow through the hole and into another opponent.) Then a lone gunman (Hideaki Ito) rides into town and, after proving his lethal worth to both sides, takes refuge in the general store of the feisty Ruriko (Momoi). She lives there with her grandson — the offspring of her Heike son, slaughtered by Kiyomori, and his Genji bride Shizuka (Yoshino Kimura), now the town prostitute. The boy, who witnessed his father's death and his mother's degradation, is mute. What miracle will make him speak again?
This is also the setup of "Yojimbo," as well as Sergio Leone's spaghetti Western remake "A Fistful of Dollars." But where Leone re-imagined Kurosawa's world in a Mexican nowhere, with Clint Eastwood creating a new flinty-eyed, take-no-prisoners definition of the Western hero, Miike is more intent on out-Tarantino-ing Tarantino in dreaming up blackly funny ways of dealing death and generally messing with audience minds.
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