Unforgiven (Yurusarezaru mono) trailer: Clint Eastwood goes to Japan

by MaryAnn Johanson

Mon, Feb 24, 2014

4 comments

A Japanese-language remake of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven? Why not? Hollywood does the same in reverse all the time.

I bet Ken Watanabe is awesome in this.

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RogerBW

Mon, Feb 24, 2014 7:38pm

Its still a remake, so I still want to ask “why”. Weren’t there any other stories worth filming? But yeah, looks good..

Paul Wartenberg

reply to RogerBW

Tue, Feb 25, 2014 2:09am

like any remake, the question is why. It depends on how it translates from one cultural norm to another. (re: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes to mind)

This Japanese version does seem to alter some of the women’s roles as more matronly, and may give the scarred young prostitute more character development.

hoover2001

Mon, Feb 24, 2014 8:15pm

Cool. I love the relationship between westerns and Japanese cinema. Kurosawa was influenced by westerns and his influence appears in some of the best westerns of the late 20th century

Paul Wartenberg

Tue, Feb 25, 2014 2:06am

If anybody can be Clint Eastwood, Ken Watanabe could. He could pull it off.

One thing to note: Akira Kurosawa made Yojimbo partly off of “Red Harvest” but also was heavily influenced by Westerns (big reason why the spaghetti western ripoff A Fistful of Dollars starring Clint worked so well). A lot of ronin tales and Wild West tales share similar themes (stranger with fighting skill and a personal code enters a troubled town, there’s a standoff in the streets, etc.).