Before I get to the main column today, I feel like I’ve got to address the Dirty Harry rumors that popped up this week. For those that don’t know, Clint Eastwood is directing a new film entitled Gran Torino which is apparently being fast tracked by Warner Brothers to be due out this December. This is on top of Clint’s new film, The Changeling, which comes out in November. Now I know Eastwood is 78, but this isn’t the first time he’s done movies back to back, and let’s face it, a guy’s gotta eat.
So, at first I took the news of Clint’s new film with mild enthusiasm. I mean, the news of Eastwood directing a new film is usually something to be celebrated considering just how amazing his recent run of movies has been, and I automatically assumed he’d be up for a Best Director Oscar next year. Then the news that the new film might be the send off for Harry Callahan started swirling around the internet.
Now I’ve made no bones in this column that I love my old-school heroes. I’ve celebrated the returns of Rocky Balboa, John McClane, Rambo, and the entire history of James Bond. This summer I’m expecting to go absolutely insane with my anticipation for the new adventure of Indiana Jones. I’d love to see heroes like Cobra, John Matrix, Ripley, and other Action heroes of my youth all return to the big screen, but the prospect of seeing another Dirty Harry movie would be something truly special.
I mean, this could all be just some cruel joke played on us film geeks, but seeing Callahan on screen again just wasn’t a prospect I’d ever considered. I mean, Clint is 78 and Callahan was probably his most physically demanding Action hero. Harry never had to physically exhaust himself like Rambo did, sometimes he could just talk to someone and they would end up dead, but still, he’s a pretty hard core cop who gets in plenty of scrapes. After The Dead Pool though, I never thought I’d see him again onscreen, and after films like True Crime and Blood Work, where Clint’s thrillers were less than stellar, I thought Eastwood had just moved on too far to come back to Callahan.
Now though, Eastwood’s a two-time Academy Award winning director. He’s directed some of the most powerful films that I’ve ever seen, and he’s been as consistent as any director in the last five years. What if he won an Oscar for directing and starring in a Dirty Harry film? To me, it would seem to be another crowning achievement for one of the icons of cinema to earn another accolade, especially if he was able to achieve this by playing a role that is not readily looked upon as a deep character. Just like Eastwood was able to put The Man with no Name and his Western persona to rest with Unforgiven, I’d love to see the same thing happen to his crime detectives in a new Dirty Harry film. Hopefully, this isn’t just a vicious rumor. If true, this December could be the most bad ass one in theaters ever.
Alright enough Dirty Harry, but in a way the rest of this column is going to deal with Clint’s other major character. In the last few columns, I’ve talked about some movies I checked out while I was recently taking a short vacation due to winter conditions. One of the last movies that I watched was the oddest Western I’ve seen since El Topo. Mixing styles and cultures in the extreme, Sukiyaki Western Django is a film with tons of the familiar elements of the Western, but shown in a way that is completely foreign to American audiences to where it barely resembles our most basic American genre.
Sukiyaki Western Django Starring Hideaki Ito, Koichi Sato, Yusuke Iseya. Director Takashi Miike.
In many ways Sukiyaki Western Django represents the inverse of Kill Bill, or at least Kill Bill, Vol. 1. With that first film, Tarantino essentially told a Samurai tale from an American perspective. QT showed why he loved Chambara films, and presented it in a way that would be accessible to American audiences. With this film Director Takashi Miike has created a Western from a completely Japanese perspective, with Japanese actors and a setting that is inherently Japanese (though the film is supposedly set in Nevada).
Funny then that Miike would choose A Fistful of Dollars as the movie to loosely base his film on, especially since that film was actually a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai Classic, Yojimbo. Then again, that basic story of Yojimbo has always shown how universal its themes are, so in a way it’s the perfect choice for this type of experiment. Once again, what this version shows is how universal the Western can be, even through the eye of a director with a unique perspective on the genre.
In many ways, this only proves many of the same things that Sergio Leone was able to bring fourth when he started making Westerns, invigorating the genre and then ending up making two of the best Horse Operas ever made. By taking the elements of the Western we already knew and loved, then distilling them with his own style Leone created something new and exciting. The Western had never been more operatic and beautiful as it had been through the lens of Leone.
Now Miike presents his own version of the same story, his cast nearly entirely Japanese except for the over the top antics of Quentin Tarantino’s Ringo, who eases us into the story in the film’s opening sequence, introducing the struggle of “the Heike clan in red, and the Genji clan in white”. This is a war that has raged for centuries, and in this film we’re told that they have brought their war to late 19th Century Nevada. We’re also eased into the film’s oddest of motifs; not only is the entire cast Japanese, but they all speak in phonetic English throughout the picture as well. This is a bizarre choice to be sure, but to some degree fits in with the Spaghetti Western, perhaps the only genre where the overdubbing of everyone’s voice added to atmosphere of the films.
There’s always been something a little off-kilter about the Spaghetti Western anyway, and the dubbing was just another element of that. I wonder if Miike would have been better served to go with a dubbed soundtrack instead of the phonetic English, but he ends up getting the same type of result anyway. What’s even funnier is that the script by Miike and Masa Nakamura tries to hit as many Western clichés as possible in the script. It’s tough not to howl when one of the villains of the film seems to struggle when calling one of his henchmen a “lily-liver”, a phrase that probably wouldn‘t be heard in an episode of Deadwood. Still, this again just adds to the chaotic fun of it all.
Fans of the story will of course recognize it immediately, as the two warring gangs are at a standstill, but are nearly reaching the boiling point when a nameless stranger rides into town (Hideaki Ito), bringing hell with him. Not surprisingly, Miike gets right to work, creating his own twists and turns that seem to fit the story quite well and keeping you guessing just enough to make the film exciting. Unfortunately, he doesn’t necessarily know when to leave well enough alone.
The movie would have worked best as a brisk tale, with a lean story that didn’t bog down the movie’s trappings. Instead we’re pushed past two hours, the first half a chore to get through sometimes, especially when the director chooses to set up sequences that belong in Blazing Saddles more than they do in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Even if you’re in this for the long haul with Miike’s crazy colors and the language choices, there are still some scenes that just don’t translate well, such as when a character is castrated and then decides to become a geisha instead of a cowboy.
Also, its sad that the least interesting character throughout most of the movie is Ito’s mysterious gunman. Eastwood and Mifune both got to show their action prowess at the outset of their entries, Miike decides against that here for the most part. The character just isn’t really given enough screen time to make him interesting enough at the film’s outset, and Ito doesn’t exactly have Clint Eastwood’s screen charisma either, which hurts him. Miike seems more concerned about introducing you to all the characters instead of making you care about them.
Much better are the movie’s heavies. Koichi Sato, as the Heike captain Kiyomori, and Yusuke Iseya, as the Genji leader Yoshitsune, are both ridiculously over the top, but are insanely fun to watch. Each has their character nailed down; Kiyomori a hilarious and bright coward when it comes to his survival, Yoshitsune a power-hungry maniac. They’re each having so much fun it’s a little tough to root against them until the final battle ensues.
Fortunately, the second hour of the flick pretty consistently awesome, ending with a battle that would have made Sergio Leone proud. The final shootout is a mix of horrific violence and cartoonish action, but Miike absolutely makes it work with razor-sharp wit and terrific editing. An samurai sword/six-shooter duel caps off the experience, set in a gorgeous widescreen snowstorm, again mixing things that I’ve seen a thousand times in a movie into something that is completely unique and exhilarating.
This is exactly the response Miike was probably going for. Even with all its major flaws, Sukiyaki Western Django is an experience that is unlike any other, and yet feels as if it belongs with the true greats that brought fourth this story before. Much like Kurosawa and Leone in their day, Miike is a special voice in cinema, bringing fourth films that are unlike any other being made today. This is a director that takes major chances in his work and its awesome to see when those chances pan out like they do here.
