In Sukiyaki Western Django, two warring groups fight over a town that supposedly has a hidden treasure of gold in it. This town started out as a nice little place with families in it. One of these families was made up of Shizuka (Yoshino Kimura) and her husband Akira (Shun Oguri). These two are like Romeo and Juliet in that she is a Genji (the Whites) by birth and Akira is a Heike (the Reds). No one really cares in the town, though, until all the trouble starts. Everything is fine until the Reds, led by Taira no Kiyomori (Koichi Sato) and then the Whites, led by Minamoto no Yoshitsune (Yusuke Iseya) roll into town. Akira ends up dead at the hands of his own kin. Shizuka and her mother-in-law, Ruriko (Kaori Momoi), are left to protect Akira and Shizuka's son. Ruriko has a secret past of her own that might help them all. The sheriff (Teruyuki Kagawa) and all of his personalities obviously won't be any help since he has already joined the Reds.
When a newcomer rides into town, Ruriko has hopes that this Gunman (Hideaki Ito) will be the answer to all their prayers. Both sides want to recruit him for theirs, each offering him part of the treasure, but Ruriko tries to convince him to work for himself and take it all for himself. It appears that this gunman loves Shizuka at first sight, so he wants to rescue them all from the warring factions. He seeks to stop all the violence, with more violence, of course.
The plot is honestly secondary to the action in Sukiyaki Western Django. The fight scenes and the visual effects are simply amazing. There is one scene where a guy has a hole blown in his gut, and then an arrow is shot straight through the hole to kill a second man. The actors went through a lot of gun training to pull off the shooting stunts alone!
If you want to see just how much they went through to make this movie, then you should definitely watch the making-of featurette. It is nearly an hour long. It's no wonder the scenes are as beautiful as they are. Everyone put everything they had into making this movie. I highly recommend you watch the featurette. It is in Japanese with subtitles, though. The main movie is in English, but I kept the subtitles on simply to help understand some of the accents, including Quentin Tarantino's. The actors were all Japanese and most did not speak English, so they had to learn how to speak a language that they didn't know fluently. Overall, they did a wonderful job of pronouncing and accenting all the words well.
As I said before, I'm not usually a fan of Westerns. Sukiyaki Western Django is definitely an exception in my book. The movie is simply stunning. If you like any sort of action or Western movie, you'll love Sukiyaki Western Django. You should go get it today!
