The film stars Josh Hartnett, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman, Kevin McKidd, and Gackt and follows a young drifter in his quest for revenge.

[2] Bunraku premiered as an official selection of the Midnight Madness section at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in Canada,[3][4] and a limited theatrical release was slated for September 2011.

2, a cold-hearted, smooth-talking murderer in a red hat and armed with deadly cane-sword; and his unwilling lover, Alexandra, a femme fatale with a secret past.

However, one night, a mysterious Drifter enters the "Horseless Horseman Saloon" and talks to the Bartender, asking for two things: A shot of whisky and a game of cards.

Later on, another stranger enters the same bar, a lone samurai by the name of Yoshi; he travelled far and came to this town in order to fulfill his father's dying wish and recover a lost medallion which had been stolen from their village.

Armed with crossed destinies, incredible fighting skills and the wisdom of the Bartender, the two eventually join forces to bring down the corrupt reign of Nicola.

As the Bartender rescues Momoko, he's briefly reunited with his long-lost love, Alexandra only for her to tragically be lost amidst the falling debris of the now burning brothel.

However, despite his exhaustion from his previous battles and the injury he suffered, the Drifter doesn't give up and proceeds to slash Nicola's throat open with an arrowhead taken from Yoshi.

With the reign of the Woodcutter and his gang finally brought to an end and Yoshi recovering his clan's medallion, the heroes part ways, hoping to meet each other again.

[12] Snoot Entertainment was founded in February 2004 to independently develop, finance and produce both commercial genre-oriented live-action films and CG animated features with broad audience appeal.

Asked about his first production in a 2009 interview, McDowell said he "met with Moshe, the director of Bunraku, and his producer Nava Levin a couple of years ago, originally to consult with them.

His project was such an interesting and provocative blend of genres and technique that I got hooked and helped them to set up an innovative approach to pre-production that integrated pre-visualization, storytelling and design into a new fluid and low budget workspace for the creative team.

The story is set on a theatre stage in a folded paper world where Russian gangsters, cowboys and samurai warriors come together in inevitable and never-ending battle.

Hartnett explained "It's in the vein of Sin City or something like that, where the world doesn't look like reality at all...Some of the scenes are gonna be more Michel Gondry-like I guess but a lot of them will be green screen as well...It's not fantasy.

The pre-visual content that he made to show during the 2008 Festival de Cannes helped director Moshe to double the amount of anticipated investment in the production.

It's very allegorical – a mixture of a samurai film and a western in a virtual origami universe where everything is made of folding paper, and there's a lot of martial arts in it...I thought Bunraku was interesting enough to be in.

In this series, he portrayed the heroic warlord Uesugi Kenshin, winning him accolades, not only for his acting performance, but also for the music single "Returner ~Yami no Shūen~" and the video for the same that were inspired by his role.

In a 2009 interview, producer Ram Bergman was asked about the choice of the shooting location, stating "we needed a lot of stages available because the whole movie is green-screen and we had to build 30-something sets.

Moshe, who wrote and directed, creates a boldly Expressionistic alternate reality to background this heavy-on-the-action story, but neglects narrative and character beyond the most basic strokes".

[50] Chris Tilly of IGN concluded it "looks amazing, the universe he has created utterly unique and original, like a pop-up book brought to life ... that's not to say that Bunraku is a total disaster, the film certainly deserving of credit for its ambition.

Mostly due to the green-screen matte work, none of the characters' surroundings feel real, and the few sets that have been erected are purposely flimsy, both overly theatrical and dependent on shadows... what pleasures arise from this film lie mostly in the extensively choreographed fight sequences, respectfully captured through clear-eyed static shots geared towards exploring the spatial dimensions between fighters".

[53] Eric Hynes of Time Out gave the movie 2/5 stars, saying that all the visual, camera, sound and other "service a story so nonsensically convoluted that voiceover exposition ... only compounds the confusion".

[55] Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News gave the film one out of five stars, saying, "it should surprise no one that visually quirky, graphic-novelish, pulp-noir action flicks rarely come through the sausage machine intact".

[56] Dennis Harvey of Variety also disliked the film, calling it "a pic that's akin to a terrarium of plastic flowers -- gaudily decorative, but airless and lifeless".