The premise behind Sukiyaki Western Django surrounds a small mining town in Nevada (though looking at the sets, you'd never guess it) that is stuck in the middle of a gang war. A sizable treasure of gold is buried somewhere in the mountains and the two gangs - the red-clad Heiki and white-robed Genji - are out to find it. In the midst of the war a mysterious stranger, The Gunman (Hideaki Ito), blows into town and the two gangs immediately set out to recruit him to their side. Of course, he has his own motives. Rather than help one of the two factions, he decides to stand up for the people trapped in the middle and clean the town up.
Even after watching the movie twice, I'm still not completely sure where I come down on it. I loved the visual style and the fight scenes, especially when swords were thrown into the mix. Both are incredibly creative and make for a fun movie. It would be borderline criminal to give away some of the more spectacular sequences, since the initial shock of seeing them is half the fun, but get ready to see some things you've probably never even thought you would see in a movie.
While the hyper-kinetic fight scenes keep the movie from feeling slow, they are the only things really driving the movie. When it stops to try and develop the story, the movie begins to chug. In the long run, the story is inconsequential, which really bothered me. Director Takashi Miike seems well aware of the history bridging the two genres and mines each to good effect. While there's a good understanding of how the two genres work, there's a noticeable lack of understanding as to why they work. There's a lot of missed potential with fleshing out the characters. Rather than developing multidimensional characters, Miike seems to intentionally keep them flat.
The "2-Disc Special Edition" label on the front of the box is a little misleading. Although the movie comes with two discs, one is just a digital copy of the movie. There is, however, about an hour of extras that are worth watching. The big offering is a "Making of..." feature that turns out to be half an hour of the cast worshipping Miike. I respect Miike's work and think he's worthy of praise, but I don't need people telling me how great he is when the focus is really supposed to be on the movie. There are some really interesting stories that are only touched upon, which is a shame.
Sukiyaki Western Django isn't a perfect movie by any means, at least if you're looking for something that goes a little deeper than insane fight sequences. The movie is worth seeing just to see some of the insanity Miike manages to squeeze into it. However, unless you're a big fan of Takashi Miike's style, you'll probably want to stick to a rental.
