Unforgiven (2013)

Unforgiven (Yurusareraru mono) (2013) is Japanese director Sang-il Lee's samurai remake of the classic Clint Eastwood revisionist western. In Lee's version the story is re-imagined as a  revisionist samurai tale and take place in the distant, harsh northern province of Hokkaido that was once peopled by the indigenous Ainu people who were run off the best land like native American Indians of in the 19th century in America. Lee stays close to the original script by David Webb Peoples, who listed as a screenwriter along with Lee. Furthermore, Japan has a history of subjugating women like cultures everywhere so the vengeance for the violence on one of the brothel whores also has historical resonance. Ken Watanabe stars in the Clint Eastwood role and Akira Emoto is his aging sidekick, the role played in the original by Morgan Freeman, and the young upstart is played by Yuaya Yagira (Cannes award winning actor of Nobody Knows) and is given the character twist of being half-Ainu. The menacing sheriff is played by Koichi Sato. Like its predecessor it is a revisionist tale of the beginning of the Meiji period and the end of the samurai period known as the Edo period. It is a faithful adaptation that justifies its existence by bringing something novel to the table in this story of violence, vengeance, and mythology of the samurai-which has its own tradition not unlike that of the western.