User reviews

The story is esspentially the same as Eastwood's Unforgiven, without the political correctness.

It's a bit slower but that doesnt make it bad. I truly think the handful of clowns wo gave this low ratings don't know how to read subtitles and are longing for an Ironman 4.

This is a beautiful movie. Well shot.

And the sword play is great

This is a beautiful retelling of Clint Eastwoods classic film. It's stunningly shot, well acted and very immersive. Ken Watanabe is the quintisenial reluctant badass. The only problem I had was with the film's villain. Gene Hackmans charming and terrifying performance is almost reduced to a mustache twirling villain. Like he literally has a mustache, which he twirls. Hackmans original performance is so engaging and effective, because he's so polite and charismatic. You really get the idea that he's a psychopath hiding in plain sight. Sadly the remakes villain falls short of Hackmans high bar. Beyond that, this is one of the better remakes I've ever seen.

What goes around comes around. Just as a fair number of westerns were remakes of classic Japanese Samurai movies so Sang-il Lee's "Unforgiven" is a fairly literal remake of Clint Eastwood's Oscar winner of the same name. Here we may be dealing with samurai but that doesn't disguise the fact that these guys may as well be cowboys and this could be the American West. It's a reasonably exciting and handsome picture, gorgeously shot in widescreen by Norimichi Kasamatsu, but it is also so close to the original it feels almost negligible. Ken Watanabe plays the Eastwood role but it's something of a one-note performance; he lacks Clint's gravitas. This could have been a classic but as it is it's nothing more than a very good copy.

When I heard that Japanese were making a period samurai movie based on the modern-day Eastwood western classic UNFORGIVEN, I was in two minds. I love samurai flicks (and also leading actor Ken Watanabe), but the Eastwood film was already pretty much perfect for a lot of fans. How could the Japanese hope to better it?

The answer is that they haven't. This new UNFORGIVEN is the inferior film in every respect, with a boring villain and a lack of talented actors and characterisation that made the original such a great movie. The Japanese UNFORGIVEN feels slow and stately and is certainly well shot throughout, but aside from the exciting climax, it has no real voice or look of its own.

For the most part, this is a shot-for-shot remake and I have no interest in shot-for-shot remakes. Thematic remakes are fine; remakes that take key material and give their own slant, like Carpenter's THE THING or Aja's THE HILLS HAVE EYES, great. But all the while I was watching this film, I was wishing I was watching the superb original instead. Watanabe does his best and while it's nice to see the Japanese remaking an American film for a change (as so many times it's been the other way around), UNFORGIVEN is a bit pointless.

I really wanted to like this Japanese version of the brilliant "Unforgiven" more, but it simply did not measure up to the original.

The Good: Using rural Hokkaido as the backdrop was a smart decision, though I wish there was more focus on the Ainu. They are the island's indigenous people conquered by the Japanese, and their culture suffered greatly. I think this would have made the story much more interesting, especially since the young rebel is half-Ainu.

The Bad: The movie follows the plot of the original almost to the T, and thus suffers for it. There was no need for it, and simply copying the theme of the Amercian version while telling a new story about the Japanese frontier would have made for a much stronger film. There is such a scarcity of good movies about the Ainu that it is a wasted opportunity.

I loved the original Clint Eastwood version and this is an excellent retelling. Few people know how much the Japanese frontier of Hokkaido parallels the American west and this story really takes you inside of that. It is a very different story due to cultural and factual differences, but the core tale rings through. I saw this when it first came out and I re-watched it just the other night. If you like action and drama you owe it to yourself to watch this. Every aspect of this movie including story, acting, directing, and editing is near perfect. This is a true hidden gem.

When a movie is as brilliant as Eastwood's Unforgiven, it's very hard if not impossible to watch its remake with a fresh eye. I tried, but could not succeed. I kept wishing I was watching the original. Not to say it was a bad film, not at all, but there are some major flaws in this movie. First of all, the characters and actors were nowhere as charismatic as in the original. Not that they were bad, but imho they lack the emotional depth and nuance that their predecessors had. While Gene Hackman's role seemed beautifully fleshed out, his Japanese counterpart is merely a psychopath.

The film imitates parts from the original at places were they could have strayed off a bit, and vice versa. Sometimes it felt I was watching a western, just with Japanese actors, while I expected it to be a samourai movie. There are scenes from Unforgiven 1 and 2 with matching color palettes, which I think is a shame. Why not go for a totally different approach? Accentuate the differences, not the similarities. But there are scenes in the original that had a lot of punch (eg the final shootout scene), which have been given a different approach and therefore fail.

Where it succeeds is the beautiful cinematography, and the conclusion of Japanese Will Munny's character. I also like the symbolic use of the elements like rain and snow.

But as said, I'm extremely prejudiced (Eastwood's Unforgiven is one of my favourite movies) and perhaps the viewer who is not familiar with the original will love this one just as well.

Let me start by saying that I am aware of the parallels and similarities between many modern Eastwood westerns and Kurosawa samurai films. I am also a huge fan of Ken Watanabe.

This film falls short because of the directing. Many of the things that made the 1992 cowboy film so great are missing here. Without spoiling it, I think fans of the original will be very disappointed, especially with the ending.

The cinematography is amazing. Ken Watanabe does the best he can. I thought this would have been easy to remake but I was very disappointed.

Yes - this film has some stunning visuals, but the pace is very slow, the characters are annoying and somewhat ridiculous at times (constantly acting like idiots), and the main character, Jubei, wallows in self-pity for the entire movie, which makes you wish he would just hurry up and die because he is beyond irritating.

Such a shame that this remake isn't as good as other Japanese films (Crouching Tiger, House of F Daggers, etc). I really wanted to turn it off so many times in the last hour of the film because the pitiful characters were like fingernails down a chalk board, but I continued to the end and was quite relieved when it was over.

Don't waste your time with this film, but if you do, just watch it on mute with something covering the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Then you can enjoy the visuals, which is the only thing this film has going for it.

This film is a test. A test on how much a viewer is willing to waste on linfetime and emotional energy on a single movie. The suffering of completely non comprehensible characters is directly paralleled by the one of the viewers. The film is so unbearable, that I only registered to IMDB just to warn others and downvote this completely overrated torture of a movie. Sure...you may think you will have your own opinion about this movie. "It can't be that bad. It has nice pictures." Remember, when you screamed and shouted at characters in a movie, because they behaved in the dumbest ways possible and said into the darkness "Hello? Are you the axe killer?" just to turn around stumble over their own feet? Ever wondered how it is to being forcefully feed frustration? What it's "taste" is? Go on. Watch it.

I would not recommend bothering with this incredibly slow re-make, with unnecessary repetitions. As an antidote I re watched Clint Eastwood's original and it is vastly superior in every respect apart from the cinematography.

The director and writer have euthanised tensions created in the original to such an extent I was bored rigid. At 20% faster it was still boring. The beautiful photography and competent cast failed to create anything redeeming. The original despite being 20 years older still has a superior pace. A friend I watched it with said, 'It's really just a western, nothing much about Japanese Samurai in this'.

We have already seen lot of Spaghetti Western made by the Italian movie makers. It had not only fortunately enough created several great imitated American Western movies, but also created several famous actors, such as Clint Eastwood, who later became an Oscar Winning director, made the original Unforgiven in 1992. But unfortunately, this Japanese adaptation from it was such a weird scripted Udon or Ramen Western with a very bad screenplay and a very weird historical background. It's almost as absurd and unwatchable like the Korean Kimchi western, The Good the Bad the Weird (2008). Both were made for the morons to kill the time, I, for one, would only stick to the original to avoid brain damage.