Unforgiven (2013)

Directed by Lee Sung-Il

It’s hard to describe in words just how good Unforgiven, Lee Sung-Il’s remake of the 1992 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name, is. The earlier movie was no mean achievement, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. This Japanese remake won’t repeat that, because that’s not how the Academy works – and perhaps it’s fair in that Eastwood’s movie forms the very broad shoulders on which this film stands. But the new version climbs up there and doesn’t put a foot wrong.

The events are set in Japan in 1880, with a brief introduction in 1869 at the point where the rule of the shoguns, and their samurai warriors, has given way to effective imperial rule. Samurai are hunted down by militia and some, like Jubei Kamata (Ken Watanabe) find some kind of refuge in the remote parts of Hokaido island. Eleven years later, Jubei, now a widower with two children, subsists as a farmer.

When a prostitute in a nearby town is mutilated by a drunken client, the cynical militia chief (Koichi Sato) applies only financial penalties to compensate the girl’s “owner” for his loss of income. The other prostitutes offer a bounty to anyone who will kill the criminal and his companion, and Jubei is persuaded (by a combination of an old friend, and imminent destitution) to seek the reward. With his friend Kingo (Akira Emoto) and a young, hot-headed wannabe samurai, he rides for the town.

Although the story mirrors almost entirely that of the earlier film, the themes are subtly different, and entirely appropriate to the Japanese setting. Jubei is not a man at peace with himself – tormented by the loss of his Ainu wife, by his violent past, and particularly by his murder of a number of Christians many years earlier.

This torment acts as a brake on his involvement in the revenge, up to the point when his old friend is captured by the town’s militia, tortured and killed. With his companions dead (or paralysed by the understanding of what killing really means) Jubei prepares to exact the only revenge he truly cares about.

Despite the horror it depicts, Lee Sang-Il has created an utterly beautiful film. There is not a wasted shot, nor an ugly one, anywhere in the film. The staging reminded me of the Seven Samurai, and the sense that we are watching a western does not jar with its Japanese setting in any way.

Although the movie core comes directly from the 1992 original, it pays homage to other American movies: Gladiator (2000)’s “remove your helmet and tell me your name” scene in the coliseum, or Lethal Weapon (1987)’s “There’s no more heroes…” presaging the imminent arrival of the vengeful hero. Even the spaghetti westerns that first borrowed from Japanese cinema are referenced in the setting of the small town that, for a moment, becomes a hell on earth.