This is an adventure, alright! I didn't think Manchuria of the 1920s could be shot as a western, but it absolutely works. To come into this strange land and time, you meet up with a motley crew of characters, and I'm not just referring to the leads. The insane mix of people and languages lend a kind of strangeness to the backdrop, and you feel like you're walking into a bazaar, a form of "Manchurian Nights" if you will.

I don't think this is a movie you watch for your expected, straight-up sensible plot. You watch it like you've inhaled a puff of opium in that den in the middle of nowhere. You are in for in the exotic appeal of non-stop, over-the-top, bang-bang fast guns and action.

It IS a western in the traditional sense, with your cool men with dangling cigarettes, and all the masculine flavors of cowboy boots, long leather tailcoats, the rifle spins, the tumbleweeds in the dust, and that memorable spaghetti music. Makes you want to strike a pose for a Marlboro ad.

Yet, pinch yourself - you are in a desert of Manchuria, not Idaho, and this is a time when Imperial Japan invaded and ruled over vast territories of Korea and China. Get on the railroad and you do not know who or what is sitting next to you. The gibberish sounds a little like formal Mandarin, but mutates into loose Korean, then intruded by the smuggish Japanese before turning into a chorus of whatever else (mongolian?) happens to be.

Then there is the violence. You cannot forget the knives and daggers cutting into those sensitive areas of the human body.

Brutish, check. Chaotic, check. Lawless, check. Once upon a time in the East. Nice.