Rent Unforgiven (2013)

Japan gets its own back - Unforgiven review by Alphaville

Clint’s western was such a good film that this almost scene-for-scene Japanese samurai remake rarely rises above curiosity value. It’s not a bad film but you’ll spend more time comparing it with the superior original than enjoying it for its own sake. Perhaps this explains why critics liked it better than audiences. Ken Watanabe (the Clint Eastwood character) plays it po-faced moody all the way through and this is not helped by a mournful strings-heavy score. The other characters are varyingly convincing and so are the confrontations. Only Charles Bronson lookalike Koichi Sato brings excitement and fun to the piece with his swaggering ‘sheriff’ (the Gene Hackman character). As with multiple American remakes of Kurasawa films, this is a missed opportunity to match or improve on the original. Payback time.