The Man with a Shotgun (1961) User Reviews

Hunting trip in the mountains

[Angel_Peter · 6/10 · 10 January 2019]

The movie starts with a hunter arriving to a lawless mountain forest and we can only guess if he is a crazy hunter, some sort of undercover cop, or maybe a criminal. Soon we find out what he is hunting and the rest of the movie shows the way to the final showdown.

I would say the movie have some amazing beautiful nature pics. Acting is kind fine. Action is good. Story is okay but not very deep.

So who would i recommend this movie to? well fans of old action movies and Seijun Suzuki. The movie is neither great or bad but a quite average movie that will entertain you well on a lazy evening where you just need to click your brain off. It is not a movie I would say is worth searching for. But if it is on a television near you then give it a try.

"Oh shotgun my partner,the moon watches over us with a smile."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 6/10 · 22 July 2020]

Getting to the end of the second of Arrow's Seijun Suzuki box set,I decided to take a peak at the detailed booklet before viewing the final title in the set. Excited from the details of this being a Western,I started having some shotgun blues.

View on the film:

Finishing the set, Arrow present the weakest transfer of the collection, with notable spots on the edges of the frame, and jolting frames that shake after hard cuts and wipes.

Continuing to build on his surrealist styling, directing auteur Seijun Suzuki reunites with his regular cinematographer of the era Shigeyoshi Mine for a open borders Western, where Suzuki and Mine criss-cross bright burning colours between the Wild West and modern society,which jump from traditional shoot outs to target practice of alarm clocks and modern-dressed outlaw bikers.

Continuing his long collaboration with editor Akira Suzuki (no relation) Suzuki continues to show an eye for filming outdoors with fluid camera moves running across the floor to the outlaws, which hit a ultra-stylised use of mirrors, as Suzuki creates two-shots with small mirrors reflecting the face of the second person.

Sending Ryoji into a sleepy lawless mountain town, the screenplay by Satoru Suyama,Takeo Matsuura & Yoshikazu Ishii has a chance to hit the bullseye on a off-beat Western, but sadly miss the mark by due to a sleepy casualness being given to Ryoji confrontation with the local outlaws, instead a much needed shot of urgency for the man with a shotgun.

Rare adventure yarn from Japan

[searchanddestroy-1 · 13 November 2016]

One more Seijun Suzuki movie that I could purchase, but unfortunately without subtitles. So, as usual, I will do my best to explain or simply talk about this movie. It takes place in the jungle, in the mid fifties, early sixties, and the hero, the main lead, as the title says, is a loner carrying a shotgun and walking through the countryside, from time to town. At first sight, we can consider it as a sort of Japanese western scheme. The loner is not a cow boy but a man carrying a rifle and defending a poor singing girl in a cheap village cafe, a chick who is molested by a bunch of men. And the bad guys are not cattle barons and their henchmen but local Yakuzas whom our hero will be up against. One surprising sequence where the lead sings with an accordion. Beautiful settings among the mountains and the woods which look like Wyoming. Worth watching.