Django

Last night, I watched Django.

If you have already seen and love Django -- for to see this movie is to love it -- you're probably shaking your head in dismay and muttering, "Mike, Mike, Mike..."

However, if you have not seen Django, allow me to introduce you to this fine piece of cinema. This is the Hard-Boiled of Spaghetti Westerns, directed by Sergio Corbucci in 1966.

(By now you're also probably thinking: "The same Sergio Corbucci who in 1980 gave us Super Fuzz, the movie about the super-cop who lost his powers whenever he saw the color yellow?" If so, you're correct. I have a very distinct memory of loving Super Fuzz when I was a kid. No relation to Hot Fuzz, by the way).

It has the look and feel of a Sergio Leone picture. But when Django gets into fights, dozens of guys die. They're like the action scenes with Chow Yun-Fat in The Killer. But it's a Western.

In the opening scene, we see Django dragging a coffin across a dusty plain while a song called "Django," about Django, plays over credits. Which brings to mind the lost art of the theme song being actually about the hero and his adventures. I think the only contemporary holdover of this lost art is the James Bond series. Come the day I'm directing my first action picture, guaranted I'm gonna have a song about the hero over credits.

Django sees three Mexican bandits chase down a beautiful saloon gal. They tie her up. One bandit whips her, while the other dudes laugh. (There's a lot of whipping in Italian pictures, I've noticed). You think this is where Django's gonna step in... but no. He just stands around and watches.

Then five cowboy-looking white guys show up and gun down the Mexicans. The cowboys all wear bright red scarves. They untie the saloon gal. And now you think: "Here are the good guys. They rescued the girl, and now Django's gonna introduce himself."

Nope. They re-tie her up, this time to a wooden cross, and prepare to burn her alive! This time Django steps in. He shoots all the guys and rescues the girl.

Django takes her to a small town, which is a battleground between the Mexican bandits and the evil red scarf guys. In Tombstone, guys like this were called the Cowboys. But in this movie, they're just called "the Racists."

Again, I thought I knew where this was going: another Yojimbo redux. And again, Django kicked my expectations right in the goddamn prostate.

Pretty soon, Django's gunning down dozens of bad guys at a time. He's planning heists. Very shades of gray, this guy. Django keeps getting the drop on the main bad guy, Jackson. And he keeps letting Jackson go, because Django knows Jackson will just come back with more minions for him to gun down. Why hunt down the bad guys, when Jackson will bring them to Django?

I won't ruin anything about this picture, since half the fun is in the surprises it keeps throwing out. I loved it.

This is one of those movies I walked past a thousand times in Blockbuster. Sometimes I'd pick up the box, but I never rented it. Now I'm kicking myself. I was finally prompted to Netflix it when I heard Miike's doing a remake. Oh man... I'm counting the seconds.