Saw Takashi Miike's latest effort. Not one of his best, but a fine piece of entertainment none the less.

Sukiyaki Western Django is intended to be Miike's homage to the sphagetti western. One famous example of that genre is Django, some elements of which can be seen in Miike's version.

SWD starts out in a stylized western scene featuring Quentin Tarantino as the gunfighter  Piringo -- pretty much the only Western character in this decidedly Japanese movie (somewhat inexplicably, Miike had all his Japanese actors speak in phonetic English, making this his first English-language film. Miike himself doesn't speak English).

Tarantino does an amusing turn in setting the scene for what follows (he returns later in the film, wizened by age and a rather ridiculous make-up job :) ).

Here's what follows: A cool, gun-toting stranger rides into a small "Nevada" mountain town that has been taken over by two rival gangs -- the Genji, in white, and the Heiki, in red -- in response to rumours of gold treasure, leaving it a wasteland for ordinary citizens.

Both sides try to woo him, but he plays coy (there are elements of this in other Western genre films, such as A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing; both are remakes of the great Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa's Yojimbo).

Some other characters of note are a widow turned vengeful whore, a boy turned mute after witnessing his father's murder, and a funky grandmother with a past.

However, we don't learn much about the gun-toting stranger, who does eventually side with the Genji but ends up going to war with both gangs.

What I love about Miike at his best is the way he uses his imagination and trademark absurdist black humour (a characteristic I like to think I display from time to time) to ambush his audience.

There are elements of this from time to time, but not enough to delight me in the way that Zebraman or Gozu did.

Much time is spent developing the history of some characters, and the movie bogs down at this point.

The fact his actors aren't native English-speakers doesn't help.

But I gotta say the final gunfight scene kicks ass!

On balance, however, while I liked it, I didn't leave the theatre with the same sense of exilharation that I did from some earlier Miike films.

Do you need to run out and see it?  It screens again on Thursday and Saturday, but I'd have to say no unless you're a huge Miike fan and are feeling compelled.

There are apparently lots of those in T.O. TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes told the crowd that Miike's advance ticket sales outperformed both George A. Romero and Dario Argento.