Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2012

Sergio Leone meets Federico Fellini. An Asian warrior (Korean star Jang Dong-gun, very cool), “the greatest swordsman in the world,” defies his mentor and refuses to kill a baby of his rival clan, instead fleeing with the infant to the Old West, where he settles in a backwater town that has, for some reason, a resident circus troupe. Geoffrey Rush is the town drunk, Kate Bosworth the motormouth maiden in distress and Danny Huston the deranged villain. It’s unsubtle but visually impressive and stylishly fun for the first-half setup. But then it sinks into repetitive, fairly constant slicing and dicing.