Starring Hideaki Ito, Quentin Tarantino. Written by Takashi Miike, Masa
Nakamura. Directed by Takashi Miike. (18A) 94 min. Opens Sep 19.
Japanese director Takashi Miike may have one of the most devoted cine-cults enjoyed by any contemporary filmmaker but even his most passionate defenders know that consistency is not his strong suit. And that’s true of both the wildly varying quality of the dozens of films he’s made since the early ’90s and the often equally erratic contents of the movies themselves.
One of very few of his works to get a North American release, Sukiyaki Western Django is the tale of a mysterious gunman (Hideaki Ito) who gets between two gangs as they vie for a town’s treasure. The movie has many moments of great bravura and audacity but is nonetheless stymied by poor pacing, worse storytelling and the decision (a typically perverse one for Miike) to have the Japanese cast utter the dialogue in phonetic English. Hell, even guest star Quentin Tarantino insists on doing his lines in a regrettable accent.
It’s all the more unfortunate given the often-inventive action choreography and the provocative nature of the cross-cultural mash-up at hand. What Miike has essentially done is repatriate Kurosawa’s Yojimbo by filtering it through not just the spaghetti westerns of Leone and Corbucci but Kill Bill, too. Despite being shorn of nearly 30 minutes since playing TIFF last year, Sukiyaki Western Django turns torpid long before the big gundown. Seeing as Miike has made three more movies since this one first surfaced, there’s no denying the man can shoot fast but his aim’s as iffy as ever.