User Reviews

Sang-il Lee's Unforgiven is at least as good as Clint Eastwood's 1992 classic. With the same general characters and plot, the remake adds some stunning visuals. The archetypal white horse dead in the snow is as powerful an image of nihilism as we'll ever see. That's rhymed later by the white bottle of horse-manure hooch that the reformed and now relapsed killer Jubei drains and tosses to the snow and his old war-mate (the Morgan Freeman sub) tortured, killed then left in the frost.

The Japanese setting — 1880s Hakkaido — makes for some crucial differences. The violence is ratcheted up significantly both because of the gore endemic to Samurai swordplay and from the cataclysmic destruction that the nation's atomic bombings have stamped on the cultural psyche.

The film also adds the bitter tribal tension between the privileged Wa and the persecuted Ainu. Jubei has a scene with his Ainu father-in-law who regrets that his grandchildren aren't learning the language. The remake also makes the swaggering young pretend-killer an Ainu. His itch, cockiness and teary admission of humble origins recall the Mifune character in The Seven Samurai.

Where Eastwood closed on the possibility that his Will Munny took his children to a merchant's life in San Francisco, here we get no hint of Jubei's future. Instead he sends the Ainu kid and the scarred whore to his farm, with the reward money. The suggestion is that with his reversion to his old killer self he no longer deserves to serve his wife's memory and to father his children. With the reward and the children he gives the young killer and the woman their chance for redemption. She removes herself from the prostitute's shame and hunger for vengeance, he from the wrong-headed attraction to macho killing.This is a harder moral position than the original.

Eastwood's film brilliantly questioned his own persona's career of film violence. The Japanese context provides a parallel twist. As it dramatizes the inescapable cycle of violence the film could be read as an argument against Japan's re-militarizing. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

I expected more from Ken Watanabe but let's not forget that Japanese cinema is very theatrical with heavy roots in the typical Japanese mentality, culture and customs. Thus expressed in the ways of acting. All this I understand perfectly, respect and like. All my life I've been a big fan of samurai movies but I'm not a big fan of remakes 'cause most of them look to cash in on the original's success, maybe not in this case, maybe it is a tribute to Eastwood. If Kurosawa gave the West "Seven Samurai" for Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven", now Eastwood's "Unforgiven" was very poorly adapted by East's Sang-il Lee in his own version. He changed many things (Ned's counter part Kingo is not married) and the worse, he changed the end. I expected to hear some close Japanese version of "It's a hell of a thing killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ver gonna have." but there's was just a weak "Drink 'till you forget. You'll remember later". All in all it was adapted to fit the way of thinking in the country of the rising Sun by remembering some Bushido principles. Watanabe's character, Jubee (or Jubei), seems to have a death wish on himself and even that he's supposed to be one hell of a swordsman, he manages to get stabbed, cut and shot in the final fight and barely survives. He even decides at the end to hit the road and leave his kids in the care of the characters Goro and Natsume. Watch this movie as a curiosity in the world of foreign remakes. P.S. All of sudden I remembered Wolfgang Petersen's remake and twist of historical facts and how he changed them in his own "fake news" version of 2004's "Troy". Personally I don't care about spoilers and always look to know how certain movies end in order to avoid watching them just not to like the ending.