Sukiyaki Western Django

This week's suggestion is a bit more off the beaten path, so to speak, than usual. It's also for a limited audience.

Sukiyaki Western Django is the film. Its a 2007 Japanese movie that Quentin Tarantino helped produce, and has a small (thank God) part in.

It's billed as an "East meets West western" and it doesn't lie. It's a spaghetti western where the characters are equally adept with a six-shooter as a samurai sword.

This is Yojimbo remade with a cult-type of intent. (Yojimbo was later remade as A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing.) Gunslinger wanders into a town where neither of the two rival gangs can get an upper hand and plays them off each other.

Sukiyaki will have a bigger audience in Japan because of some of the campiness. But if you don't mind a little 'camp', aren't too upset by generous amounts of violence or gore, and like westerns and swordplay, this is a good film to rent.

I know that's a bunch of caveats, but here are two more. You need to watch this with the subtitles on - the accents are just too thick to understand. You'll need to somehow get past Quentin Tarantino's awful imitation of a Japanese accent - which borders on insulting, but is fortunately over after the first five minutes.