MovieChat Forums > Sukiyaki uesutan Jango (2007) Discussion > What's with the magic bullets?

What's with the magic bullets?

posted 16 years ago by sigu828
6 replies | jump to latest

How does the bullets of the Genki leader turn in air and hit the target everytime? is this just another ridiculous humor for Miike or some else?

[–] Dragon_Eye_Morrison 16 years ago

He's shooting while taking the direction of the wind as a guide so that the bullets will fly all the way to his target. Yes, it's a wacky moment of the film.

''Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you."

[–] sigu828 16 years ago

I didn't quite get the "wind" part. but yeah, this is wacky.

[–] Dragon_Eye_Morrison 16 years ago

Yu can see that he's about to shoot in one direction, yet he changes it according to where the wind is blowing, so that the wind will carry the bullet to his target.

''Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you."

[–] Sanjuro-15 16 years ago

Is pretty clever actually.

A 'conventional' western shootout (especially in spaghetti Westerns) is generally completely unrealistic. The two protagonists are usually so far apart that the inaccurate guns they would have been using at the time combined with effects of strong wind and so on would make it absolutely impossible to hit anyone.

In this case Takashi ups the unrealism and makes it completely ridiculous by having the shooter understand wind and bullet trajectory perfectly. Ha ha.

Has anyone done this before though? Almost everything else in the movie seems to be from some other Western.

[–] Brad_Thomas 13 years ago

I wouldn't call this scene whacky. I thought it was badass!!!

"It's easy to be brave from a safe distance"
-Aesop

[–] Emhilradim 8 years ago

That's actually a reference to the original battle of the Heike and the Genji, who used arrows. Obviously with a pistol you would never try to shoot into the wind like that, but this movie was a symbolic reference to the battle at Dan-no-ura (remember that being referenced at the beginning of the movie?).

Yoshitsune was the name of the Genji commander. Kiyomori was the name of the clan patriarch of the Heike, although this is where the movie deviates, as Kiyomori died before the battle of Dan-no-ura. Basically while the film is undoubtedly Django, it makes a lot of reference to actual events in Japanese history that are part of their folktales.

At the battle of Dan-no-ura, Noritsune (the governor of Noto) knew he would not survive, so he challenged Yoshitsune to a duel. But Yoshitsune, for all of his act of regality and prowess, instead hid behind his soldiers and his archers and had them attack Noritsune from afar. Kind of like Yoshitsune from this movie, yes?

They're adapting Japanese folktales of one of their darker eras of time (a time when a child emperor was pursued and slain), and using it for a movie that's a spaghetti western homage.