This movie was ten time better BECAUSE it was spoken in English. The spaghetti western films its riffing on achieved ALL of their international cache because they were dubbed in English. Rather than do that in 2007, Miike wisely had his actors perform their intentionally ripe "western" dialogue in the language EVERYONE has come to associate with the spaghetti westerns for decades. Sure, a lot of those old Italian movies played IN Italian for the home audience, but considering how many of them were made SPECIFICALLY with the export markets in mind, they were in fact seen by MORE people in English-language prints than in Italian. Any filmmaker attempting a new spin on the material would be a fool not to shoot in English to make the connection even stronger, and rather than rely on the utterly bland sounding dubbing houses that plague so many North American releases of anime and Hong Kong movies, Miike went one better and simply asked his cast to essentially do the dubbing live on set! Brilliant, and I'm not even the biggest fan of the film (GOOD, BAD, WEIRD has just the slightest edge for my tastes). Anyone who can't discern what the characters are saying need only turn on the subtitles and then read them when necessary. Really, it's not that hard. Personally, I only needed to turn them on a couple of times when I wanted to rewind to make sure I heard a couple of lines properly, then I switched them off again. I didn't find the dialogue terribly difficult to understand. Corny, for sure, but that was clearly the intent. :)
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