Venice 2013 Dispatch, Last Day: Jun Kunimura Rocks The UNFORGIVEN Japanese Remake

jackie-chan
Contributor; Italy, The Philippines
Bookmakers are saying that Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs is now the frontrunner to win the Golden Lion choosen by the international jury headed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Second on the classification is Miyazaki's The Wind Rises, while the third position goes to Philip Gröning's The Police Officer's Wife.

Trying to guess the winners of a Festival is of course a very meaningless diversion: we're not talking about the Oscars, but of nine, almost random personalities with different tastes and ideas. From what we've seen, every single title could be a potential winner or loser, since no title really stands out from the others. That's why, in this last dispatch, we find it better to talk about some very good movies we've seen in the collateral sections, out of the main lineup. All three of these deserved to be in the big race, and the reason why they aren't is one of this year's Venice mystery. We'll go back to it, among with other thoughts and questions about this 70th edition of the oldest film festival in the world.

See you tomorrow for the winners!

The UNFORGIVEN Japanese Remake is Cool Entertainment

OK, the original masterpiece remains unreachable in its crepuscular perfection, and Ken Watanabe hasn't got Clint Eastwood's charisma. Still, Lee Sang-il's Unforgiven remake is quite good and enjoyable. The story, excluding a few little changes, is exactly the same as the 1992 version. The set has been relocated in a full Japanese scenery, but the mood is still so western, with more gunshots rather than swords and samurais. The director manages to amplify pathos through an empowerment of the soundtrack and giving more dramatic takes to the scenes, differing from the noir dryness of Eastwood. The 1992 film was an outdated masterpiece with a mournful evocative mood, this one, although done in a more conventional way, is cool epic entertainment with some spectacular scenes in it.

P.S: Watch out for Jun Kunimura's great performance, playing the role that Richard Harris did more than 20 years ago.

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