Unforgiven

This remake of Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning epic may lack the austere, classical weight of the original, but it makes up for it in visual splendour. Unexpectedly brilliant.

Lee's version offers enough grand spectacle and historical intrigue to carve its own space in the international multiplexes.

The film is remarkably faithful to Eastwood's version. It carries on a long tradition of exchange between Westerns and Japanese samurai films that stretches back to Kurosawa and Sergio Leone.

It's a curiosity, perhaps, but it's nicely made, beautifully acted and well worth seeking out.

Clint Eastwood's 1992 western is adored by just about every critic in the world. Except me. Weirdly, I found Sang-il Lee's reverent remake gripping.

It's an enduring yarn, well told: a rare remake that functions independently, even as it reminds you - vividly, in places - of the original's elegiac pleasures.

Lee has made a film so good that it almost equals its namesake, that sour, magnificent western which won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars in 1993.

Even at his most dogged and dutiful, Korean director Lee Sang-il crafts a retelling that never dips below a certain baseline of handsome competence, making a great case for the Hokkaido landscapes as a rugged frame for the action.

There's no shortage of bloodshed, but rare is the film that uses bullets and flashing blades to provoke sadness rather than excitement.

This "eastern" remake of Clint Eastwood's seminal '90s western boasts a similar sense of rough-shod lyricism.

The samurai/Western osmosis is given a terrific new surge by this beautiful-looking, smartly modified translation of the Eastwood classic.

Not as redundant as it sounds ...